Country Parson

Paul, Pastors & Guides

2012-02-08T17:50:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I wrote about being stuck in Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth for the duration of Epiphany. We’ve had at it in the little rural church I serve several times a month with the result that, as the congregation became more comfortable with Paul, they also became more willing to ask questions that they had always wondered about but, not wanting to look stupid or ill informed, they had never asked.

If, they asked, what I said was true, that Paul’s letter was written at about the same time that Mark’s gospel was being penned, then what gospel did he preach because he often says he preached it?

For that matter, when were the gospels written?

If Mark was written first, why is Matthew listed first?

Paul sometimes writes about ‘his’ gospel. Why isn’t there a gospel according to Paul?

You said that Luke was one of Paul’s followers, and you also said that Luke didn’t know Jesus and was not one of the disciples, so where did he get his information?

You said that Paul’s letter to the Romans is a later more mature rendering of Paul’s theology, so why does it come before 1^st Corinthians?

What do you mean they’re not in chronological order? What order are they in?

That goes for the prophets too? What idiot made that decision?

How can other Christian traditions have books in a different order and even different books than our bible?

Back to Paul, this all things to all people stuff makes him sound like a chameleon. Who can trust what he says?

Yeah, he keeps contradicting himself!

We seminary educated clergy can too easily forget that these and other questions are constantly lingering in the minds of our parishioners, even if usually suppressed. They are lingering because they are the questions they’ve had since they were old enough to wonder. They are suppressed because they’ve been taught not to question the pastor out loud, in public, and because they’ve been taught that to question scripture is to question the authority of God, so it’s better just to sit on it.

I suspect that three conditions must be met for honest questions to rise to the surface. First, there must be a level of mutual trust that dumb or contentious questions can be raised without fear of humiliation. Second, there must be time and space made available for them to be asked. Third, there must be an honest invitation.

I don’t know; I don’t understand; That doesn’t make any sense: these are hard questions to ask, and only the brave are willing, usually prefaced with the obligatory, “this may be a dumb question but...” It’s not only a fear of being made to feel stupid, it’s also a fear of offending the clergy, the doctrines of the church and even God.

Memorizing a favorite bible passage is one thing. Reading the bible and being told what it means is one thing. Bible study with workbook questions is one thing. But wrestling with scripture, arguing with scripture, questioning scripture, well that’s another thing altogether. One role of pastor as teacher is to bring members of a congregation to the place where they can do that in a responsible way guided by well informed but not inerrant clergy.

Some months ago I sat in on a service in which the minister asked everyone to open their bibles to a certain place. Then he repeatedly urged them to underline a verse while he told them what it meant. I didn’t have my bible with me, something he made sure to notice with a disapproving look, but I looked on at the one my neighbor had. His was so underlined and highlighted that there was nothing left unmarked, yet he dutifully penciled in another line as the preacher harangued. He was satisfied. His job was to underline, maybe even to memorize. It was not his job to wrestle with the words, challenge them, let them “divide soul from spirit, joints from marrow.” It was sad. Would that he and others present had a better guide.

Well informed guiding is the key. We’ve been on adventures with a number of inspiring guides who have led us into bird havens, fern forests, reef dives, museum tours, deep canyons, and ancient cities. They don’t know everything, but they know what we have needed to open our eyes to new and deeper understanding. They walked with us, looked with us, waited for us, urged us on, and encouraged us to go farther than we ever would on our own. The best of them took the time to know us as individuals with stories of our own, and shared with us some of their story as well.

That’s what well informed guiding is about, and it’s what pastorally guiding a congregation ever deeper into scripture is all about. It’s about sharing the journey with them, using all one’s knowledge to guide with confidence, willing to admit the limits of one’s own knowledge, rejoicing in one’s own new discoveries, and leading onward with faith toward a goal always just beyond reach. It’s about knowing them and their stories, and sharing something of our own with them.

Small group settings are where that kind of guiding can happen. It isn’t possible to do it from the pulpit. Sermons, at least in larger congregations, can offer little more than words to incite questions and stimulate hunger for more. But what if small groups are not offered? How frustrating it must be to have one’s spiritual appetite ignited with no hope of food ever being served. Maybe that’s why many Christians are satisfied with a few jokes and some warm words in one church, and prurient recitations of sin sprinkled with threats of hell in another. Both are easily forgotten and neither promises more than they can deliver.

Gay Marriage in the State of Washington

2012-02-02T11:31:00.001-08:00

The Washington State legislature is likely to pass a gay marriage bill by early next week. It’s generated quite a few letters to the editor in our local paper, each of which has been apoplectic about this moral outrage that flies in the face of what God, through the bible, has ordained marriage to be.

I don’t imagine there would be much to be gained by pointing out that civil marriage has nothing to do with either God or the bible, but is an institution established by the state and defined by law. Every society has something that is recognized as marriage, and every society defines it by law, whether written or oral.

Christian marriage is another matter. The history of marriage, both civil and religious, in the Mediterranean world of the centuries around Christ, is both complex and fascinating. It is in that environment where many of our ideas about what marriage is have their origin, and it is worthy of some study. Within that context, the church, writ large and over time, developed a doctrine of marriage as having been established by God, adorned by Christ, and involving a relationship between husband and wife in which God plays an active role. Denominations flesh out the doctrine each in their own way. In some it’s hard to tell the difference between the officiating minister and a justice of the peace - including the words “...by the authority invested in me by the State of...” Those are words one would never hear in an Episcopalian service where the couple are the ministers of the sacrament, and marriage is a sacrament in our tradition. A tarnished one to be sure, but a sacrament just the same.

Other religions also recognize marriage as something special to be celebrated before God or the gods. I don’t know much about them, but imagine that they are as devoted to what they think marriage is as Christians are to their ideal. It’s an ideal, by the way, that has been “more honour'd in the breach than the observance,” and, sadly, some Churches have used the bible to accommodate horrific abuses and betrayals in marriage.

In any case, Christian Churches are free to recognize, or not, whatever form of marriage is consistent with their several understandings of God’s intentions as discerned in scripture. They are not free to impose that understanding on society as a whole, nor on those outside their particular denomination. On the other hand, they are free to do what they can to influence public opinion and legislators that their particular view of marriage is the one that should be reflected in civil law. As it turns out, that’s, more or less, been the case for the last two hundred years or so with civil marriage defined in terms roughly consistent with generic Protestantism to the extent that it could be synchronized with the practical aspects of contract law.

As for me, I strongly endorse the legitimization of gay marriage in the State of Washington, look forward to the same in all states, and to the day when the church understands the depth and breadth of God’s will as revealed in scripture to include it within the sacramental blessing of marriage. I do understand the thinking of those who are certain that God never intended such a thing. I understand it, but do not agree with it.

Christian Book Store Flying on One Wing Crashes

2012-01-29T17:17:00.000-08:00

Our local Christian Book and Supply store closed after more than thirty years on Main Street. The owner said it was the Internet that drove him out of business. I’d like to think there might be more to it. The first time I went in to poke around, close to twelve years ago, I was surprised that it only carried Christian literature oriented to the so called Christian Right. Other literature was limited to the most conservative wing of Republican politics. An NRSV or New Jerusalem Bible could not be found, though one might be able to stumble on something in the Jews for Jesus line. Window posters often linked hyper patriotism and Christianity. Other products, jewelry, cards, gifts, and so forth, tended toward the kind of syrupy sentimentality that sometimes provides a brief warming of the heart before meeting the reality of everyday life. That was the way it was and the way it remained until it closed a few days ago.

What I’d like to think is that a greater number of its clientele began to realize that its brand of Christianity, however deeply felt, made them feel uncomfortable. It left little room for conversation, and no room for deviance from the narrow path of religious/political belief it equated with Christian faith. Maybe they couldn’t put words to it, but perhaps they began to wonder if there might be more to following Christ than what they were seeing on the shelves, and that maybe Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, et al. did not have all the answers after all.

It’s hard to say. The community is shifting. Church attendance is down in most places because younger generations, even those raised as “good Christians,” are not convinced that the inside of a church building has anything to do with an authentic encounter with God. Newcomers that do come into the main line churches bring with them both a hunger for spiritual guidance and the courage to challenge asserted dogma. A couple of the more conservative congregations are growing slightly as a declining number of very conservative believers coalesce out of many congregation into a few filled with like minded persons.

The political environment appears less homogeneous than it did only a decade ago. The overall ethos of the valley remains politically and religiously conservative, but the voices of those who differ are heard more often, and have greater influence than they once did. In fact, I’d like to assert that the valley is less conservative than it is pragmatic, and I suspect that the ultra conservative ideologues, whether religious or political, are beginning to discover that they cannot assume that a majority will fall into line behind them. That can be quite unsettling for some who have been in that line. It’s so much easier just to float down the river where going along to get along has always meant a pleasant and predictable way of life.

As for me: I have little regard for ideologues on either side, but responsible conservative and liberal advocates, whether religious or political, tend to be correctives to each other, and I’m comfortable living in the tension that creates because it keeps me from becoming too comfortable with my own assumptions and prejudices.

What is Ownership?

2012-01-20T16:04:00.000-08:00

What does it mean to own something? I guess I’ve owned a few things, things that were in my possession for my exclusive use until they had no more life in them, although I have to admit they were few. For instance, right now I’m looking at a clock that I bought at a roadside stand on Kauai twenty or thirty years ago. I think it cost less than $5. I doesn’t run anymore. The clock face has no covering so the hands are bent out of shape. It just sits there telling me it’s 10:17 a.m. or p.m., take your pick. One could probably say that I own it because no other person would have use for it, and there is no word other than ownership that fits.

That seems a very limited definition of ownership, but I can’t think of anything broader that makes sense.

Do you own a house? The other night we were talking about our house. I’ve written about the problematic question of home ownership before, but it bears repeating. I don’t think anyone ever owns a house. We are only stewards of a piece of property for a time. It’s a temporary thing. For instance, we now live in the fifth or sixth house we have owned. We received those other houses from other people, lived in and cared for them for a while, and passed them on to the care of others who will do the same. I like to think that we now live in the last house we will ever own, and have just finished a remodeling project the cost of which would not be recovered if we were to sell. But that’s not the point. We have greatly improved the delight we take in living in here. Someday another family will own this house, and we hope that our improvements bring them joy also. We are owners of this property only in the sense that our names are on the deeds. Of course we paid, and are paying, a substantial amount of money to live here, and we like to think of that money as an asset, but the greatest portion can only be understood as rent paid for the duration of our occupancy. Ownership is a very transient thing. Our estate will eventually be valued at whatever is left after we have frittered away most of it. So even our treasured money is a transient thing passing through our fingers as food through our stomachs. We are merely stewards of it for a very short time.

I thought about that again this morning when I caught a bit of a television show about the sale of certain classic cars at auction. I don’t know why the owners felt a need to sell, but it was clear from the interviews that they identified themselves as owners in almost narcissistic terms. I didn’t watch enough of it to get a feel for what the new owners thought. As for me, I think all they did was transfer stewardship from one to another. Whatever cash was exchanged was little more than water being poured from sieve to sieve. There are other ways of understanding ownership, and since I’m on the subject of cars, not so many years ago I had a friend, now deceased, who owned quite a few antique cars. What made him different was the sheer child like delight he took in them, including his incurable desire to share that delight with anyone who showed even the slightest interest. He seemed to know that he didn’t really own these things, he was the steward of them for a time, and that time would pass.

We don’t own any million dollar classic cars, but we are avid art collectors who have slowly built up a collection of works that might have some modest value if sold at auction. Do we own them? That’s hard to say. We certainly have the legal right to their exclusive use. Is that ownership? They bring joy into our lives each day. If they were destroyed or stolen money would not replace them. Their value is not in dollars but in their existence as expressions of artists’ gifts that have spoken through our eyes into our minds and hearts. We hope that others also can see and hear, each in their own way. (A number of our friends are singularly unimpressed by them, and that’s OK too.) Someday they will hang on walls in other places. In the meantime, we are their keepers. It all adds up to the fact that we really don’t own them, we’ve just rented them for a season, and we have a responsibility to care for them until they are handed into the care of the next steward.

About now I can almost hear the harrumph of someone who says that they worked hard for their money, they earned it, and I’m demeaning the value of hard work and its rewards. Not at all. Hard work, performed with diligence and appropriately rewarded is worthy, commended by scripture and valued in every culture. There is a difference between that and the egotistical, fear driven, defensiveness that seems to be the aura surrounding so much of what we call ownership.

As Christians we are called more to stewardship than ownership. In our society we have the right to the exclusive use of property that we have acquired legally, but as Christians that civil right is mediated by a higher law calling us to stewardship with the understanding that, whatever our exclusive rights might be, they are temporary at best.

Plank One vs. Plank Two: A bridge they do not make

2012-01-15T16:12:00.001-08:00

The problem for contemporary self proclaimed conservatives is that the two primary planks in their platform are at odds with each other, so much so that they cannot hold.

Plank one demands radical freedom from government regulation and oversight so that personal autonomy can be enjoyed to the greatest degree possible.

Plank two demands that a bundle of particular social values be enacted into law and rigidly enforced.

The dominant figure in favor of plank one is Ron Paul who, quite accurately, notes that he cannot endorse much of anything in plank two. That makes him unacceptable to a majority of those claiming to be conservative.

The dominant figure in favor of plank two is Rick Santorum who, quite accurately, notes that he cannot endorse much of anything in plank one. That makes him unacceptable to a majority of those claiming to be conservative.

In the meantime, it appears that most so called conservatives are simply unaware of the unbridgeable conflict between the two. What they want is a government that will leave them alone to live as they like within a society that reflects their social values, forcefully rejecting any others. The closest we’ve come to that in American history are the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies whose leaders demanded the autonomy to live as they pleased, and what they pleased was to outlaw any way of life that deviated from their own. I suppose the modern nation that comes closest would be Saudi Arabia. I wouldn’t much care to live in either.

Prisoner's Dilemma meets Isaiah 55.6-11

2012-01-14T15:31:00.000-08:00

I listened to portions of an interesting program on NPR this morning while wandering around town doing errands. It was on evolution, the nature of altruism and some experiments done with the game The Prisoner’s Dilemma. Maybe you listened to all of it and can say more. As for me, I didn’t even get the names of the people being interviewed. That, of course, does not stop me from making a few comments.

Are there strategies in Prisoner’s Dilemma that are more likely, or even guaranteed, to win? Apparently there are. Played often enough, an opening move of cooperation followed by moves that mirror whatever one’s opponent did can score more points and thereby win. It was also noted that successive iterations of strategies that learn from previous rounds of the game can end up with the bad guys obliterating the good guys - the devil strategy overwhelming the Jesus strategy.

Which brings me to my point: the wisdom of God that is a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks. The foolish stumbling block of Christian faith is that it is God, and not Prisoner’s Dilemma strategies, who determines the final outcome, and that that outcome has already been accomplished by the decisive victory of life over death on the cross. It makes no sense. It would be an utter failure in the psych lab, and it could not possibly pass a logic 101 exam. But God does not seem to be persuaded by what we think is required to make sense, or what strategies we employ to gain the advantage over our opponents.

To be a Christian is not to wallow in altruism, whatever that may be; nor is it to win through successive iterations of games and strategies. It is to live in the faith that, in Christ, the game is over and God has won. It’s our faith. I wish we lived as if we believed it. We say we do as we affirm our faith each week, but mostly we backstop it with some Prisoner’s Dilemma strategies of our own just to make sure.

I don’t think God is terribly surprised. This week’s message on the sign board at the local Methodist Church said it well: “God is not disillusioned with us. He never had any illusions in the first place.” Glad to hear it.

We are stuck in Corinth again. Rats!

2012-01-13T11:50:00.000-08:00

Those of us who follow the lectionary are going to be stuck in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians until Lent. It’s a problem for our parishioners for several reasons. The controversies in Corinth seem at odds with what the accompanying gospel lessons have to say about Jesus’ teaching. We have been raised on the sophomoric idea that the early churches were gatherings of loving people sharing one mind about Christ and what it means to be Christian. It isn’t always clear what Paul had heard by way of rumor and letter about conditions in Corinth. It certainly isn’t clear how his counsel is to be translated to our benefit in our day given our conditions. As important at Paul is, he must always take a back seat to Jesus, and that can often be too easy to overlook.

Some of my local colleagues are going to duck the problem by ignoring it altogether. They’re going to preach on the Old Testament and Gospel readings as if Paul had not just been heard from. I’m not sure that’s a good idea because so much of what is written in 1^st Corinthians has become bedrock for assumed truth and grounds for doctrinal warfare. In the meantime, we will all take a moment to wipe sentimental tears from our eyes as we hear again the words of chapter 13 before we get back to the serious business of behaving like Corinthians.

For my part, I’m going to spend a little bit of time reintroducing the congregation to Corinth and Corinthians and then wade into the quagmire of trying to ferret out what we are to learn from them in our own time and place. How does big bawdy Corinth speak to a little ranch town in the rural west? We shall see. The advantage for this small congregation is that I’m only there twice a month. Two other retired clergy take the other Sundays, and can correct my errors.

Free Enterprise, Private Enterprise and Government

2012-01-09T19:26:00.000-08:00

The campaign is on and the devotees of an unfettered free market system are intent on getting government out of the way.

Wherever did the idea come from that we have, or ever have had, a free market system, fettered or unfettered? What we have is a private market system that exists within the political context of a democratic republic. It’s a good system, but it’s an amoral system and cannot be trusted for the commonweal on it’s own.

I was struck by an editorial article by Rodney Clapp in the January 11 edition of Christian Century in which he discussed the limitations of private enterprise as a supplier of goods and services. It led me to write down these thoughts that have been rumbling about in my head for some time.

The private market system, operating within reasonable constraints that assure public health, safety and honesty in the market place, works very well when there are many suppliers, many buyers and the ability of each to make informed decisions. It doesn’t work so well when the numbers don’t add up to many, or when many is counterproductive.

The private market system also lacks internal incentives to consider the public, or external, costs of doing business. The costs to society of pollution, unsafe products and practices, withholding of essential services to the poor, etc., are not natural calculations for private enterprises. They need to be imposed, in appropriate measure, by the society itself.

Then there is the knee jerk assumption that anything government does can be done better and cheaper by private industry. Contracting out public services is not the same thing as allowing the advantages of private sector competition to do the job better. One might, for instance, contract out police services to a private enterprise, but a community would not open up the town to a multitude of competing police services selling themselves to individuals or groups. Well, I take it back. A town could do that. Chicago did, in a sense, during prohibition, and ended up with gang wars as each competed for territory in which they sold “protection.”

The point is this: what I hear being argued in the GOP debates, and among my conservative friends, is that private enterprise is a moral system of moral agents, and is best equipped to do all things for all people. That’s naive at best. The private enterprise system is a very efficient system for the production and sales of goods and services. Given the right competitive environment, it cannot be beat for the generation of new ideas growing into new and improved goods and services. But it is an amoral system. Whatever morality it has is injected into it from the society it serves acting through its governments.

The Political Process: Noble or Knave

2012-01-06T10:55:00.000-08:00

It’s just politics. Let’s get the politics out of it. They’re playing politics. How did politics get such a bad name?

I spent a lot of time in politics. Some of it organizing at the local level; some of it lobbying; some of it teaching; some of it working on campaigns; some of it consulting about community and economic development; some of it helping groups better understand management, leadership and organizing effective work groups. All of it was politics one way or another. Along the way I met a few scoundrels, but I also met some of the most principled men and women of integrity that I have known. Several of them served in Congress.

Whatever else it is, politics is the art of deciding how we are going to live together. We are social animals. We live in community. We require community for survival. Even the loners and hermits among us require the presence of community in order to be loners and hermits. We live in families, cities and national states. We participate in clubs, associations and churches. Our employment puts us in the company of others for cooperative purposes. Sellers and buyers depend on community to define their markets and assure some level of predictability. Our lives are intertwined with friends, associates, places of assembly and spontaneous engagement with others. Decisions have to be made in each case about how we are going to live with one another, and how those decisions get made and implemented is what politics is all about.

Not every one agrees that the politics of living in community is a good or necessary thing. Some claim they go it alone. They are self made, owing no one. They do not now, nor have they ever, nor will they ever, have any need for government to help or tell them what they can and cannot do. They live in a fool’s paradise of ignorance and delusion. I’ve worked with a few who have come close to living in that paradise, mostly men living on the streets, whose lives were so chaotic that they could not abide any rules, not even their own, and yet their survival depended on the presence of the community around them, and the reasonable predictability of how to find basic needs in that community.

I’ve only met two hard core survivalists who considered themselves modern day mountain men capable of going it on their own without any outside support. Both seemed oblivious to the arsenal of food, weapons, clothing and other equipment produced and sold to them by the community, to say nothing of their suburban houses, pickup trucks, public roads into the mountains, and the public policy giving them the wilderness into which they imagined themselves disappearing.

Working out the decisions that govern our lives together, that provide a reasonable predictability, is always a function of negotiation with others, even in the most hierarchical organization. In any gathering of those who will do the negotiating, there will be some who are genuinely interested in the welfare of the community while not being unaware of the power and position that might be theirs in the offing. There will be those driven by the acquisition of power and position, with only marginal interest in the welfare of the community as a whole. And, there will be those who are primarily interested in protecting and promoting particular interests in competition with other interests. It’s a mess and prone to corruption, but we Christians know that we live in a fallen world, and understand that muddling through is what we do. Politics lingers in an uneasy balance between nobility and knavery. It’s never just one or the other, which means that vilifying the political process as such is not only senseless but prevents it from working as well as it can.

What, I think, has brought politics at the national level into such disrepute, especially the Congress (except, of course, for your own member of Congress) is a combination of factors. The rules of the House and Senate have become so arcane that it’s impossible for the public to understand them, and relatively easy for those who are steeped in them to use them to avoid or shut down the decision making process. The enormity of the lobbying industry, with its unlimited access to cash and skill in manipulating so called public opinion, makes it difficult to craft reasonably impartial legislation for the public good. Rank and file citizens no longer believe their thoughts and opinions will be heard, and that their only “representatives” to their representatives in Congress have to be associations they pay to join and who will lobby for them on this or that. The Citizens United case has resulted in such enormous amounts of corporate and secret money entering the campaign process that elections appear to be for sale to the highest bidder.

As an aside, and by way of closing, the idiocy of twenty-four hour cable news reporting and “analysis” has more than a little to do with the disrepute into which politics has fallen, but that’s for another time.

Civics Anyone?

2012-01-05T12:17:00.000-08:00

For seven years I taught a course called Management and Society at an east coast university. It was almost twenty years ago, but that’s beside the point. Most of my students were from technical fields, primarily engineering and medicine, seeking an MBA to further their career opportunities. I remember my dismay when my first class was met with blank stares. It’s hard to discuss management and society if one does not know anything about society, especially the one in which we live.

I took a quick survey. “When was the last time you took a course in civics, American history, or anything like that?” Some couldn’t remember. Most said in maybe the 9^th or 10^th grade. None had taken anything along those lines in college. They were technical people. If it couldn’t be framed as a mathematical formula, they weren’t interested. As a practical matter, most had a hard time writing a simple declarative sentence as well, but that’s another issue.

In a class of graduate students desiring an MBA, we had to start at the beginning. America is a republic, a representative democracy. There are different types of governments, even different types of democracies. This is how ours is different. There are three branches of government. They are defined by the Constitution. This is how we got our Constitution. And so it went.

I imagine they found it a bit embarrassing to discover they were young adult citizens, aspiring to business leadership, who were operating from a largely forgotten 9^th grade education about what it means to be an American. To be sure, they were more interested in learning how to craft market strategies that would ensure a high rate of return on investment, but mine was a required course and they had to endure.

From then on, every semester started with a few days of basic 9^th grade civics as preparation for everything that would follow.

I’ve learned that my budding corporate leaders were not unique. I am no longer surprised by people demanding their First or Second Amendment rights who have never read the Constitution. Many go on at length about what the founding fathers intended, but have never heard of the Federalist Papers. Defenders of a corporate free market don’t know that corporations were originally creatures of the state authorized, at least on paper, to do business benefiting the public good and the state itself. Regular voters admit that they never read the voter information booklet received in the mail, and don’t actually know much about the initiatives or referenda they vote on. In fact, they don’t know the difference between the two. And so it goes.

We need better civics education in our schools. We also need a way to provide remedial civics education for the adult population. How about requiring a basic civics test to get or renew a drivers license? No? I guess the DMV has enough image problems as it is. Well then, let the Luddites rule (no offense to the original Luddites).

Literal or Poetic

2012-01-03T16:00:00.000-08:00

This morning our lectionary study group talked about a literal reading of scripture as opposed to a poetic reading, recognizing, of course, that there are other ways as well. A few hours later I was reading an essay by Hauerwas in which he cited a passage from Yoder’s Royal Priesthood. I think it is important enough to share.

If we understand deeply enough the way in which the promise of the Holy Spirit is linked to the church’s gathering to bind and loose (Matt. 18:19-20), this may provide us well with a more wholesome understanding of the use and authority of Scripture. One of the most enduring subjects of unfruitful controversy over the centuries has been whether the words of Scripture, when looked at purely as words, isolated from the context in which certain people read them at a certain time and place, have both clear meaning and the absolute authority of revelation.

To speak of the Bible apart from people reading it and apart from the specific questions that those people reading need to answer is to do violence to the very purpose for which we have been given the Holy Scriptures. There is no such thing as an isolated word of the Bible carrying meaning in itself. It has meaning only when it is read by someone and then only when the reader and society in which he or she lives can understand the issue to which it speaks. (Yoder, 535)

Enemies; what are they good for?

2011-12-31T14:14:00.000-08:00

What is it about enemies that make them so necessary to us? We have them in a variety of ways expressed through the nasty edged gossip about others that we share with one another, the life long grudges that separate family members, the blood feuds between neighbors, and, most of all, the national enemies that inspire large armies with the latest weapons.

I wonder about all of them, but most of all about national enemies that inspire large armies with the latest weapons. Even small government conservatives and fringe libertarians agree on one essential role of government - the national defense. If nothing else, they want a big, strong national defense establishment to protect us against our enemies. It’s ironic, considering that many of the so called founding fathers feared a standing army more than anything else as a threat against the young republic.

The key to understanding this is the concept of enemy. There is no point in having beefy armed forces if there is no enemy against whom they can protect us. The issue isn’t about defense at all, it’s about the need to have an enemy. I’m convinced, in spite of border clashes all over the place, that large scale acquisition of empire by conquest is a thing of the past. The 20^th century put an end to that. That doesn’t keep significant members of the public, including some leaders, from raising the specter of WWII all over again in the form of a revitalized Russia or greedy China as they do their best to scare the hell out of us. It takes only a moment of casual observation to learn that the big nations now know that building empire has little to do with territory and everything to do with market share.

If not invading armies of major powers, then who? We have a number of useful candidates. Hordes of illegal aliens, meaning Mexicans, invading us from the south. That’s a good one. Terrorists, meaning Muslims of any stripe but especially Middle Easterners, is another good category of enemy. What exactly a large nuclear tipped military is supposed to do about that is unknown, but it doesn’t really matter, because what we need is an enemy, and these two are adequate in the absence of anyone else.

Why? Is it that we need an enemy to more clearly define who we are as Americans? Is that what enemies help us do? Maybe we need them to give us a way to flex our muscles and prove our national manhood. I don’t know about groups of women getting together for general conversation, but in any sizable group of men there will always be a few who only speak in a pugilistic tone of voice, accompanied by fist thumping and finger pointing, because its the only way they think anyone will take them seriously. North Korea does that a lot. They just look like idiots. Do we Americans act that way too?

Jesus Christ, Carl Jung, Rene Gerard, Pogo, Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter all have one thing in common. They recognized the role of enemy as an expression of our own “dark” side that must be recognized and faced if we are to be made whole and healthy. Externalizing the role of enemy the way we do, both as persons and as a nation, is a psychological (and political) recognition of that truth, but one that, by keeping its locus external, enables us to avoid recognizing it as a truth about us. A window through which we can see our enemies is so much better than a mirror reflecting our own image.

In the meantime, the news isn’t all bad. We’ve got the biggest military establishment in the world, which means we also have a very profitable military-industrial complex, underwritten by the taxpayer, and providing the best in killing power to buyers in every jerk water trouble spot with enough money to pay for them. For special friends, we’ll even throw in “foreign aid” in the form of chits redeemable for armament. It’s a living.

PS Some of my military friends will take offense, claiming I'm ignorant and disrespectful of the service to their country to which they have dedicated their lives (literally). They would be wrong about that. That's not what I wrote about.

Getting back to the Basics

2011-12-29T11:58:00.001-08:00

I don’t remember exactly when, but a very long time ago, in my formative youth, I listened to the Easter story of the resurrected Christ walking with two disciples on the road to Emaus as he explained to them how both Moses and the prophets spoke clearly about the Christ. I thought it would be terribly useful for him to repeat that to me in person because it wasn’t clear at all that the Old Testament had much to say about the Jesus I knew.

Of course there were the Advent, Christmas and Easter readings from Isaiah. Very poetic about the suffering servant and all, but not persuasive in explaining Jesus as Son of God and Messiah.

It took years, but one day while reading in the 59^th chapter of Isaiah, it occurred to me that God was saying, in fairly clear language, that God in God’s self would be the Messiah. I started looking for other references in scripture in which God declared that he, himself, would be the long awaited savior. Not that there were not many other Messiahs, anointed by God to perform some saving function in a particular place at a particular time: Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Zerubbabel and Cyrus to name a few. But time and again, in the Psalms and through the prophets, God declared that it would be by his own arm, his own strength and his own presence that the people of God would be fully and eternally rescued from destruction and death.

I’ll leave it to you to do your own searching in scripture, and hope that you find it rewarding. The point is that in Jesus, God was fully and materially present in our world to do exactly what God said that he would do. I think that’s probably what Jesus explained to those two disciples on that road to Emaus. I think that’s what Peter and Paul finally understood. It’s what makes Jesus different from any other prophet. He was not a man especially blessed by God’s Spirit to proclaim a greater truth. He was God incarnate doing what God always said he would do when the time was right.

Theologians reading this post are likely to mutter something like, ‘yeah, so what’s new about that.’ But I think the average Christian has not been exposed to that line of thinking, and I’m going to test it out this spring when I start a new mid-week bible study for a group that has not had one for many years. We shall see.

The Feast of the Holy Innocents

2011-12-28T10:44:00.001-08:00

It’s the Feast of the Holy Innocents, a troubling “feast” if there ever was one.

How is it that this horrid event is not cited elsewhere in non-biblical literature? Maybe it never happened. Why would God, who engineered his own Son’s escape, not do something for all those other children in Bethlehem? Who wants a God like that? Luke’s infancy narrative knows nothing of this event. Was he wrong? Was Matthew? In any case, how can we call the slaughter of toddlers and infants a feast?

Whether the event, as described by Matthew, happened or not, the fact remains that Bethlehem was not a large town. I don’t know what its size would have been in Jesus’ day, but certainly not over 500 or so. There would not have been a large number of infants and toddlers. Their slaughter by the notoriously blood thirsty Herod, whose record of killing enemies, friends and family knew no bounds, might not have even been noticed.

As gruesome as the story is in itself, it should also remind us that within the freedom God has given us is the freedom to act in the most despicable of evil ways. It should call to mind our own culpability in the slaughtering of innocents today through domestic violence; sexual, psychological and physical abuse; the horrors of child soldiers molded into amoral killing machines by ruthless adults; withholding of necessary and available health care from those in need; and so it goes.

We cannot blame God for what Herod did any more than we can blame God for what we have done, or been tolerant of. We can be thankful that not even the evil darkness of Herod’s violence could overcome the light of Christ, infant though he was. From that flickering infant light has grown a greater light of triumph over all death. If, on the one hand, we have shared some degree of complicity in the slaughter of innocents, with the other hand we are given the opportunity to witness to that greater light through the words and deeds of our lives.

I wonder what that would mean for ordinary Christians leading ordinary lives of relative comfort and safety?

What Are Supply Clergy?

2011-12-27T11:16:00.000-08:00

What are supply clergy? Are they merely ordained persons who are authorized to use the costume, magic words and hand motions needed to legitimize an hour of worship while the life of the congregation goes along without them quite well, thank you very much?

That appears to be the way they are seen and used by more than a few small congregations without regular clergy. I think there are several reasons for it. First, some supply clergy, mostly retired, see themselves that way. They are disinterested in the pastoral care of the people whom they serve for a few hours, and maybe never again. The life of the congregation is of little concern to them. A bit of extra income and a chance to exercise their rights of ordination are what it’s about.

That fits in well with congregations who need a clergy person from time to time, but have no interest in letting some stranger into the intimacy of their lives together, and, perhaps, some resentment toward larger congregations with beloved full time pastoral leadership.

It isn’t always that way. Along with two others, I’ve been supply clergy for a small, rural congregation for eleven years. Before I retired, I celebrated an evening service once a month, but another retired clergy celebrated a morning service with them twice a month. She moved away, and now I’m the one who is retired and serve them twice a month, sometimes more. Two other retired clergy each serve once a month as available. I am very fond of this little congregation. Their spiritual, emotional, physical and economic welfare is important to me. Home visits, hospital calls, funerals and just hanging around with them are an important parts of my life. The thirty-mile drive is a breeze on country highways where ten or twelve other cars are heavy traffic. With a little effort, we will start a midweek adult bible study this spring.

It still does not make me their pastor. I think it has to do with the idea that, as supply clergy, I could walk away tomorrow. Indeed, I am free to travel at my convenience, even over major holidays, something I would never have done when serving as a full time pastor of a congregation. It also has to do with their recognition, maybe embarrassment, that they can only afford to pay for an hour a Sunday plus travel, and anything else they receive from supply clergy is a gift that they might hope for but cannot ask for.

It’s a tricky place with a lot of psychology wrapped around insecurity involved. I wonder if there is a better way to do it?

Psalm 72

2011-12-21T10:22:00.000-08:00

Throughout scripture God reveals what it means to be a good ruler of people. Psalm 72, for instance, says these are the characteristics of a good king who has been filled with God's righteousness:

Rules with righteousness
Gives justice to the poor
Defends the needy among the people
Rescues the poor and crushes the oppressor
Delivers the poor who cry out in distress and the oppressed who have no helper
Has pity on the lowly and poor
Preserves the lives of the needy
Redeems the poor from oppression because their blood is precious in his sight

My ultra conservative friends, Christians one and all, object saying that “you just want to take our money and give it tot he poor.” That common and simplistic answer is dead wrong, but widely believed.

A few days ago Mr. Romney made a $10,000 bet about something. I think it had to do with health care. I can’t make a bet like that, but I’ll give a nickel to anyone who can find passages in scripture suggesting that God would like us to:

Eliminate almost all government
Do away with regulations
Offer enormous financial incentives to those who are already quite wealthy
Give corporations all the rights and privileges of personhood.
Invade other nations for specious reasons
Live in fear of anything and anybody that is not like us
Let the poor sink or swim, it’s up to them

Bultmannia

2011-12-16T17:04:00.001-08:00

I ran into a local acquaintance the other day, a very conservative Presbyterian certain that his denomination is going down the tubes because it no longer respects the authority of scripture. What it’s really about is homosexuality. It’s a sin. He’s against it. The Church should not tolerate it. It’s been a driving issue in his conversation for at least ten years. His arguments were tightly formed, legally impressive, academically well researched and morally certain, at least to him. I say were because the tide of theological opinion seems to be turning against him, and I’m guessing that a tide that is turning, in spite of his unassailable arguments, must be driven by heretics.

Indeed, said he, a majority of the Presbyterian leadership are followers of Bultmann. They all studied him in seminary, and now they are following him down the path of extreme demythologizing to the point of denying the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Bultmannia has consumed the Presbyterian Church. It’s not really about homosexuality, it’s about the authority of scripture, and this is the proof.

I had no idea Bultmann was a Presbyterian, or even a Scot for that matter. We Episcopalians certainly read bits and pieces of Bultmann in seminary, but I don’t recall him being the center of our studies. I guess Princeton was different. Oh well, I hear much the same from some Anglicans. It’s not about homosexuality, it’s about the authority of scripture.

I asked my acquaintance if it could be that the other side takes the authority of scripture just as seriously as he does, but hears the Spirit speaking through it in different ways. Not if you’re following Bultmann was his reply.

We wished each other a blessed and merry Christmas as we said goodbye.

It Came Upon A Midnight Clear, but we were not listening

2011-12-14T19:46:00.001-08:00

Carol singing is popular this time of year. Maybe door-to-door caroling not so much, but the familiar tunes echo through every store, mall and gathering place. Christmas pageants are filled with them. They’re on the radio nonstop. Even we Advent observers are itching to sing them, and do. There is one in particular that haunts me each Christmas season because it speaks such an uncomfortable truth. If I am ever forced to live on a desert isle with only one Christmas carol, this would be it.

It Came upon the Midnight Clear

Edmund Sears (1810-1876)

It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old,

From angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold”

Peace on the earth, good will to men, from heaven all gracious King. The world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels sing.

Still though the cloven skies they come with peaceful wings unfurled, and still their heavenly music floats o’er all the weary world;

Above its sad and lowly plains the tidings which they bend on hovering wing,

And ever o’er its Babel sounds the blessed angels sing.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long:

Beneath the heavenly hymn have rolled two thousand years of wrong;

And warring human kind hears not the tidings which they bring;

O hush the noise and cease your strife and hear the angels sing!

For lo! The days are hastening on, by prophets seen of old,

When with the ever circling years shall come the time foretold, when peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling,

And all the world give back the song with now the angles sing.

Are Ya Ready for Some CHRISTMAS!

2011-12-10T17:11:00.000-08:00

Something odd happened this year. Maybe it’s been this way for a while and I just didn’t notice it, but around here stores went from Halloween directly to Christmas. Thanksgiving was a momentary blink in the sales aisle displays of Safeway. Christmas music has been playing over loudspeakers since November 1, and I wonder if anyone ever stops to listen to the words of old favorites. I wonder if they inspire anyone to wander into a church just to see what’s going on. It could be less than enlightening.

Some congregations are so intent on preserving the solemn tone of Advent that they not only eschew any hint of Christmas joy to come, but wallow in the awfulest Advent hymns ever written on the grounds, I guess, that a little aural discipline is good for the soul. Something like self flagellation with whole notes in a minor key. Others seem to have no idea at all of a season of quiet, reflective preparation for the coming of the Christ child. They just leap into Christmas along with the stores and it’s all over by noon on the 25^th of December. No preparation, no explanation, but probably a nasty sermon or two about how we get it but Macy’s doesn’t.

In one church a newcomer discovers that something is about to happen, and whatever it is does not look like a good thing. In another she finds that it has already happened but has no idea what or whether it has any real importance.

In the meantime, the true meaning of Christmas is explored in depth through a hundred television specials with such a plethora of characters that none can be taken seriously: Kris Kringle, Santa Claus, St. Nicholas, the Grinch, Baby Jesus meek and mild, the true story of Mary and Joseph (many of them), drummer boys, herds of widowed parents finding new love, Jack Frost, Rudolph of course, and a couple of dozen others bring all down to the lowest common denominator, which is very low indeed.

Maybe I’m just getting grumpy in my old age. I’m not one to go about trying to get the Christ back into Christmas. It began as a festive pagan holiday long before we invented Christmas, and has successfully remained so for thousands of years, spreading throughout the world, regardless of religion, without the aid of a single missionary.

I am interested in the strangers, newcomers or long lost returning “members” who, for whatever reason, decide to step into a church just to see what’s going on. It seems to me that this is the one season in the year when a loving, gentle hand might be most needed to guide them, not only to the manger, but to the greater presence of God that is symbolized by it. How? By special efforts to use simple liturgies, accessible language, adult classes on the history of Christmas and the development of our faith, familiar music of excellent quality, informative sermons and a willingness to live peacefully with the rowdy secular holiday going on outside.

Ponderings while suffering a cold and thinking about ringtones

2011-12-03T20:03:00.000-08:00

Remember the movie “You’ve Got Mail” in which romance bloomed through annoying computer beeps announcing incoming e-mail? Cute movie.

The other morning, as I was deep in Morning Prayer, my collection of electronic gizmos began their serenade of beeps, whistles and chirps announcing incoming mail and the occasional text message. The odd things was that I felt almost compelled to put aside scripture and conversation with God in order to find out what it was that Staples, Land’s End and Orvis had to say. Then there was the suspense of wanting to know the latest headlines from Yahoo News, Washington Post and New York Times. Besides, who knows, someone might have sent me a real message.

My cell phone sits beside me in the car. It’s illegal to talk or text while driving. The darn thing beeps to announce a text message. Now my curiosity is working overtime. Maybe I could just sneak a quick look. Why? How important could it be? Not very!

What is it about us that entices many of us to treat every buzz or ringtone as a sign of urgency demanding our immediate response lest the universe cease to function? I remember writing about something like this a year or two ago, and wondering the same thing then. More particularly, why do we feel an urgent compulsion to respond to beeps heralding junk mail, jokes and spam when we seldom feel the same sense of urgency or compulsion to respond to God’s invitation to prayerful conversation through which the truly important is present?

Members frequently confess that, no, they don’t have a dedicated time for daily meditation in God’s presence, they just don’t have time for it, anyway they don’t know how, and besides there are things to do, and meditation in God’s presence is as close to doing nothing as possible - uncomfortably close to laziness. What if someone sees them just wasting time reading a bible and talking with an invisible God when there are chores to be done? That is a very screwed up way of looking at daily priorities, but a common one. Curious, is it not?

I have no illusions about reversing the order of things so that time with God is an urgently felt need while electronic dings and dongs are relegated to the “when I get around to it” pile. For one thing, I’m not so sure we can blame it on computers and phones. I suspect that something else took their place before they came along. But I do think that we pastors can do more to discipline our own lives in a more godly direction. I also think that we can do more to guide our flocks toward the same thing.

I’m on a committee that, a couple of years ago, messed around with developing a survey instrument that would help reveal congregational core values and desires. We came up with a dandy and tried it out in a parish we knew to be healthy, growing and imbued with a culture of generous giving. We felt we knew this place well and could easily guess the survey results. We were wrong. What was most desired, what was most lacking in congregational life was well informed, competent guidance toward a richer, deeper life of prayer and meditation.

We only used the survey instrument that once. It was too complicated and expensive to replicate. Never ask a bunch of academics and academic wannabes to do something like that. They always overdo it. Now we have much simpler, more pragmatic instrument purchased from a trusted church consultant.

Nevertheless, I think the point was made. In spite of all the excuses, there is, at least among regular church going folk, a hunger for prayerful communion with God and a desire for guidance in that direction. They may still be tempted by the siren call of “You’ve got Mail,” but they really do want to make authentic prayer a higher priority in their lives. I suppose our first step would be to ask if God has a distinctive ring tone app we can download and distribute.

Learning to Let God Lead

2011-12-02T10:45:00.001-08:00

I was standing in the parking lot of the Mamaroneck, New York train station on a warm September afternoon in 1982. How I got there, and why, and how God had something to do about it is what this story is about. In the meantime, how I was going to get back to New York City was the more important question. The time table was indecipherable, and I had no idea which side of the tracks was city bound and which side went somewhere else.

It started months earlier when I was rather forcibly offered a promotion I did not seek that meant a move I did not want to make to New York City. I liked my life long home in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. I liked my job, my friends and the options open to me for a good future. That I was mired in the emotional mud hole of a divorce, with two young daughters caught in the middle, was the only drawback, but one big enough to shove me into the unfamiliar darkness of depression. Contradictions abounded, and the question of New York was an unwelcome addition to them. Should I go and at least look it over, or should I stay and look for another job in another arena?

Who to talk to? How about my pastor? Nice guy, about my age, the pastor of a small Lutheran Church out in the suburbs. Men my age were supposed to have ducked out of church shortly after confirmation to return on the rare occasions of marriage, baptism, Christmas and Easter. We were disinterested in funerals, death being a figment of our imaginations in the far off land of old age. For whatever reason, I was not one of them. My church and my somewhat juvenile faith were important to me, and always had been. But I digress. What he said was to go ahead and scope it out, but try to let God do the leading this time. He knew me well. I generally did all the leading and hoped God was following. Who could possibly know what he meant by letting God lead this time?

Anyway, a few weeks later I arranged an early morning flight to NYC. I’m an early riser, but not an early morning person. It takes hours for me to be presentable in public. Sitting next to an elderly couple, I needed a few cups of coffee and something to eat before even saying hello. Turned out that they were also going to New York to scope out a job. He was a linguist and professor of theology deciding if he would take on the job of translating portions of the bible into some of the dialects used by Amazonian Indians. It would mean living in the Amazon for a time to become more familiar with their languages. He didn’t know if he would take the job, but was determined to let God do the leading. That’s what I learned from him. What he learned from me was the story of why I was going to New York and why I had severe doubts about it. Somewhere along the flight he asked me what church I attended. I told him that he wouldn’t know it, it was just St. John’s, just a little congregation out in the suburbs. “Indeed I do,” he said, “I was once an interim pastor there.” “And, since you seem to be full of anxiety about all of this, why don’t you let God lead for a change.” Apparently that was the standard line for Lutheran pastors from Minnesota.

It turned out that the office I would be running would require serious remedial attention for at least a year. That I could handle, but not the rents in Manhattan, even for the smallest and shabbiest of walkups. Do you know how little extra money a newly divorced man with two children has? It’s not much even on a good salary. Someone suggested Mamaroneck, a close in suburb, a little on the blue collar side, with less expensive housing. That’s how I ended up out there, where, as a matter of fact, I found a sublet in a co-op development that would be adequate for the short term. Of course, as co-ops are, they wanted me to go through all kinds of interviews with the board and subject myself to background checks just shy of clearance for entrance to the White House. I didn’t have time for that. I had to get back into the city for an evening meeting, another few days in the office, and then back to Minnesota where I belonged.

That’s when this guy tapped me on the shoulder and said if I was going to the City I’d better hurry. The train was coming soon. So I followed him (and his wife?) across the parking lot, up the stairs and onto the platform. He turned around. He was wearing a clerical collar. “Hi,” he said, “my name is Bill and this is my wife Sunny.”

“OK, I can see you are a minister of some kind, what kind are you,” was my undiplomatic reply. “The rector of St. Thomas’ Church in Mamaroneck,” he said, “and who are you.” We got on the train, settled down in facing seats, and my confused story came tumbling out in the thirty minutes it took to reach Grand Central Station. As we parted ways he told me to take the job and not worry about the housing question because he would take care of it.

He did. The next day I got a call from the real estate agent saying that Fr. Bill had vouched for me and that was good enough for the co-op board, the sub-let was mine for a season.

I took the job. Bill, being the only person I knew outside the office, and him for only a few weeks, became my only friend and confidant as we sipped beers watching football in the rectory living room. He pointed out that I needed a long range plan, a place of my own, and, since I was both ignorant and naive about renting in the New York area, he had an idea. There was a woman in the congregation who knew quite a bit about rentals in Westchester County. She worked in the city and I should call her for some advice. A week or so later I did.

Her name was Dianna and she worked for a guy named Lauder who ran a little cosmetic company of some kind. That’s all I knew. We arranged to meet for lunch. Me, being on Minnesota time, made the reservations for Noon when all normal people eat lunch. New Yorkers, not being normal, eat at One or later, but I didn’t know that yet. I looked around the vestibule of the restaurant for the gray haired church lady whom I was expecting to meet. No one was there but me, the maitre ‘d and a very attractive blond about my age. Since I was ignoring her, she finally asked if I was Steve.

We talked about real estate. One thing led to another. Two and a half years later Bill officiated at our wedding. We are still on our honeymoon, only slightly interrupted by the complicated merging of four teen agers into a new household. Each had their own particular issues and aspirations of being an only child. They are all in their forties now and doing well. How I became an Episcopal priest is another story for another time, but it is the continuing tale of learning, however slowly, what it means to let God do the leading.

Prepare to Meet Your Maker

2011-11-24T05:34:00.001-08:00

So, Isaiah says, it’s God’s fault that we have made such a mess of things. If he would just make himself more known, “...open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence...” then we would behave better than we do.

God appeared to have done something like that in the Exodus stories, and it didn’t make much of a difference. Maybe God’s timing was off. The people just weren’t ready for it. After all, they did complain that they didn’t want anything like that to happen again, and would be much happier if God would confine himself to speaking through Moses from now on.

We are reminded, during this season of Advent, that God did open the heavens and come down, not with quaking mountains, but with angels singing across the skies to an audience of a few ignorant shepherds to herald the Christ coming humbly as a baby born in rude circumstances and of doubtful parentage. Why won’t God do it the way we want God to do it?

During the first few Sundays in Advent we give thanks for the birth of Jesus while boldly asking that he come again soon to do it right this time, to come in glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead. I wonder. I wonder if Christ’s second coming will be just as unpredictable as his first? The various apocalyptic writings in scripture describe, in great conflicting detail, what the second coming will be like, and centuries of interpreters have made their living off assuring us of their accuracy. My bet is that they are all wrong.

I wonder if God might be waiting around to see if we will ever learn from what Christ has already taught. How long will it take for us to begin living daily lives more in tune with Christ’s teaching? Maybe, as the rabbis say, if there is ever a single twenty-four hour day in which genuine peace is enjoyed throughout the earth, the Messiah will come. In the meantime it might be prudent, in the words of the theologian Rooster Cogburn, to “prepare to meet your maker,” because the greater probability is that you and I will go to him through the humiliation of death before he comes to us through ripped open heavens in the glorious power of quaking of mountains.

Flying First Class

2011-11-22T10:05:00.001-08:00

The New York Times recently featured an article on the transformation of first class air travel, especially on overseas flights, from roomier, more comfortable seats and better food, to the luxury of flat beds, privacy screens and an over abundance of service. I have no problem with that, and have enjoyed several flights up front with grateful thanksgiving for the ability to do so.

What does trouble me is the other end of the plane, especially on domestic flights, where every effort has been made to stuff as many passengers as possible into the smallest tolerable space while removing any sign of hospitality. I see no reason to treat people like animals, stripping them of almost all dignity. I’ve heard the arguments about maximizing seat mile revenues while pleading corporate poverty and find them wanting. One airline marketing VP was cited as saying that coach travelers were only interested in the lowest fare, and creature comforts are costs that can be shaved to keep fares low. There may be some truth to that, but for many travelers that cheap fare is dear. Money for it has been saved up for a long time, or it’s been financed by credit card debt that will be paid off over many months at high interest. Dehumanizing one's customers with utter contempt for their well being may be a plan for profit but it is immoral, and I cannot help but believe that there is a better way.

A few airlines have made modest accommodations for their coach passengers. Hawaiian serves a well prepared complementary hot meal between the mainland and Hawaii. Alaska offers meals for sale that appear to be nutritious, as opposed to the fat, carb and salt mix of processed junk food sold on some other airlines. We flew coach on EVA to Taipei a few months ago. The seats were comfortable. There was enough room between rows to recline a bit without slamming into the person behind. Food and drinks were more than adequate. The same cannot be said for many American airlines on international routes, and domestic flying in coach is simply a painful experience to be endured with as much tolerance as possible.

I’m always struck by the quarterly news reports on airline performance and customer satisfaction. The criteria are limited to on time takeoffs and landings and how much luggage is lost. I’ve been on the receiving end of those questionnaires. Not a single sign of interest in whether my seat was comfortable, was there enough room between me and the guy in front of me, was food or drink of reasonable quality offered at a reasonable price, was I treated like a valued customer or a cow on the way to slaughter.

I don’t imagine that much can be done about it. Airlines have proved, at least to themselves, that they can be successful without paying much attention to customer comfort, except in first class. They deal with declining passenger numbers by reducing fleet size and making remaining planes as spartan as possible for the majority of their occupants. I’m not sure how that can contribute to long term growth in passenger numbers. As for me, I remain grateful for the ability to fly up front whenever I want to but resent the corporate thinking that makes it so hard for everyone else.

Kicking Against the Goads

2011-11-20T15:59:00.001-08:00

Like many others, I had something to say this morning about fat and skinny sheep and sheep vs. goats. I also had something to say about God’s concern for economic justice, and that it cannot help but take us into the realm of politics whether anyone likes it or not.

Although I stressed that there was nothing wrong with being a fat sheep, there was something wrong with butting and shouldering other sheep out of the way to keep them from getting a share of the good grass and clean water. Although I stressed that there was nothing wrong with being a goat, there was something wrong with failing to address conditions of homelessness, hunger and healthcare. Although, I said, that whether we like the analogies or not, we must be mindful that the issues are dear to God who emphasizes them frequently through the prophets and speaks to them directly through Jesus Christ.

Although I said those things, the congregation still got hung up on the critter and not the deeds. Some took offense at being compared to sheep, dumb sheep. Some praised the intelligence and courage of goats, and noted that we raise more goats than sheep around here. It’s a price to be paid when preaching in farm country.

Some, cleverly reading between the lines, were a bit nervous about an implied political message that might appear supportive of those radical, lazy misfits occupying Wall Street.

The after sermon conversation went on for quite some time, and I suspect it was because these lessons hit close to home. Better to deflect them than to let them invade our private places. We prefer God’s word to endorse what we already believe, not challenge it. It’s a perfectly normal reaction, one common to us all. What was it that our Lord said to Paul on the road to Damascus?: “...It hurts you to kick against the goads.”

I don’t think it was a bad thing that we had that extended after sermon time to talk. It was, to me at least, a sign that God had penetrated more than a few defenses, my own included.

Closerup and Letumdie

2011-11-19T11:00:00.000-08:00

From time-to-time I’ve commented on the dominance of a very conservative political ethos in our region, and wondered about its internal inconsistencies. After all, the region was settled with the aid of the Homestead Act, the protection of the army and transportation made available through subsidized railroad construction. Dams paid for with federal money damed up the Columbia and Snake for water, electricity and barging. The REA extended the benefit of that electricity to remote areas. And so on. Be that as it may, it has not stopped the majority opinion from electing hard core right wingers to congress and cheering on Tea Party lunacy.

A few days ago The Times, the local Waitsburg weekly, and a fine one at that, headlined that state cuts could close Dayton Hospital. Dayton, Washington’s General Hospital is a small hospital and nursing home providing solid basic health care to a large rural area. Larger hospitals offering a full range of health care services are 35 miles away. The much needed and highly valued Dayton General is able to exist in part through state grants, and that’s the problem. The state has its own revenue problems and intends to cut funding to rural hospitals by enough so that Dayton General would have to close. Its board of directors has said they are unwilling to go to the voters for even higher local taxes to make up the pending shortfall of something over $400,000, and they want folks to petition the legislature for relief.

A true blue Tea Party conservative would have none of that. If the local people cannot afford, or choose not to afford, the cost of their little hospital, why should taxpayers on the wealthier West Side of the mountains, or those from ritzy Spokane, fork over their hard earned cash to pay the bill? The best government is the least government, right? Smaller is better than bigger. Lower taxes are better than higher. People have to learn to take care of themselves and not rely on government handouts. Isn’t that right?

So I figure that the honest conservatives of the Dayton General Hospital catchment area will not only refuse to petition their legislators, but rise up in righteous indignation against this blatant appeal to nanny state socialism. If the local people won’t pay for it, then let it close. Who knows, maybe the locals will loosen their pocket books and pony up another $400,000 a year in taxes to keep it open. It’s their choice.

Occupy Wall Street? Who Cares?

2011-11-16T19:33:00.001-08:00

Will occupy Wall Street make a difference? To who about what? Most people seem to be more aware of the pathological disparity of wealth and income. Some appear to be aware that it is not a matter of some people doing well in the old fashioned American way while others are just not trying hard enough, or, perhaps, not lucky enough. Something has happened that has tipped the table, rigged the game, so to speak, so that some have the opportunity for enormous profits while most do not.

So is that it, awareness?

If the intent is to force a change on Wall Street it will fail. Wall Street doesn’t even have to wait them out. Wall Street just goes on about its business as it always has knowing that the large pension and investment funds, major corporations and world wide bond traders are the ones who count, and no one else. The occupiers are little more than an annoyance, and not all that inconvenient at that.

It would help if Americans would get over the idea that major corporations headquartered in America are somehow American. As one corporate representative said on NPR recently, if we don’t get the government subsidies we want we will move our production overseas. Corporations began as creatures of the state, authorized to do business deemed in the public interest. Now, with the ability to incorporate anywhere, produce anywhere, sell anywhere and buy anywhere, they are creatures unto themselves with no national loyalty. Their only loyalty is to the bottom line and Wall Street analysts, both of which they are perfectly willing to manipulate. The question is, who are “they.” They are not the investors, of which I am one. They are not the board of directors, at least not often. They are not even the overpaid, marginally competent executives. They are some undefinable combination of all of them that the Supreme Court has the audacity to proclaim is a person. It’s like something out of a bad science fiction movie.

The only pressure points that might result in useful change are located in D.C. and the several state capitals. It is public policy and only public policy that establishes the conditions under which wealth and income are generated. The makers of public policy alone are able to shine the uncomfortable light of public scrutiny on corporate practices that may be harmful to the well being of the community. The Occupy movements across the nation may be able to make that happen. It all depends on the 2012 elections. Two things must happen. The adherents of Tea Party ideology have to recognize that what they truly desire cannot be found in right wing policies, or they have to be outnumbered at the polls. If candidates championing the far right can be defeated, if representatives who are willing and able to take a more pragmatic view can be elected, if classic American liberality can prevail, things might change for the better. We shall see.

Deborah, Barak, Jael and Me

2011-11-11T10:15:00.001-08:00

Our little lectionary study group got hung up on a reading from Judges. I don’t think it would matter which reading because almost everything in Judges is something to get hung up on. But in this case we were wrestling with the story of Deborah, Barak and Jael.

The question: if you were going to preach a sermon on this story only, what would you say? The point of asking it as conditioned by preach and sermon is our automatic assumption that preaching a sermon and giving a lecture are dramatically different things, and I’m not so sure that they are, at least not necessarily.

A recent column touched on the problem Christians have of not knowing the story of their own faith and denominations well enough to tell it to others. The same holds true for the story of God’s people as recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. Judges, for all of its violence, helps tell the story of the struggle to become a people of God. I see no reason why a sermon, even a short Episcopalian sermon, cannot be used from time to time to teach the story without trying to draw it to a close with a clear Christian moral conclusion.

When we left Joshua, it appeared that the promised land had been fully conquered and settled, all was at peace, and the only thing left to do was to get the Israelites to give up their household gods in favor of worshiping the Lord God only. It didn’t work out that way. The Israelites turned out to be a rough federation of sometimes cooperating and sometimes waring tribes. The land they occupied was also occupied by Canaanites who refused to leave. They were surrounded by other kingdoms lusting after their newly acquired lands. Local gods, partifularly the gods of agriculture, appeared to offer more than Jehovah could, especially for men who stumbled across a temple where fertility was celebrated through the services of temple prostitutes.

Judges records it all with no apology for how brutal it could get.

One obvious possibility for preaching on the Deborah story would be to concentrate on the primary roles of Deborah and Jael as early feminist models of courage, leadership, faith in God, and the ability to commit cold-blooded murder. I am more inclined to focus on the issue of just how hard it was, scratch that, how hard it is to become a people of God. They, and we, live in a hostile world. It is not hostile toward us because we are followers of God. We, and they, are not subject to violent hostility because of God, but simply because we, and they, are in the way. Moreover, as Judges fearlessly reports, they, and we, are just as active participants in violence as anyone else. Get in our way, whether fellow believers or not, and it’s war.

The truly amazing thing about Deborah’s story, and all the stories in Judges, is that God did not give up on them, does not give up on us. Why, I do not know! I would. Think about it, what story in the Book of Judges is not a contemporary story, not about others only but about us also? Many years ago I taught a Wednesday morning bible study for homeless men in lower Manhattan. The group was solid. They were dedicated in gathering each week and diligent in their study. Judges was one of their two favorite books. The other was Revelation, and that was mostly because they had personal experience with visions like those visited on St. John the Divine. But I digress, what appealed to them about Judges was that if God could do something worthwhile with people such as Ehud, Samson and Jephthah, then they also were not out of God’s reach. Those men were at least honest about being no better than Ehud, Samson and Jephthah. I think it’s a harder for you and me to admit the same thing. We identify with Deborah and not Barak, and certainly not with the heathen Sisera. We are Gideon and not his son Abimelech. And on it goes.

In the end, I’m not sure how I would preach a single sermon on the Deborah story, but I would take a shot at teaching the Book of Judges not as their story but as our story also in all of its brutal grittiness.

A New Farm Insurance Program

2011-11-08T11:39:00.000-08:00

Law makers have been threatening to eliminate farm subsidies for years on the grounds that most of it goes to large, corporate style farms that make plenty of money without government help. According to AP reports, existing farm support programs cost taxpayers between $7 and $8 billion annually. The new plan is to replace direct payment subsidies with a form of free insurance against losses due to price fluctuations which would supposedly shave $23 billion off costs over ten years. There is not a lot of agreement on how solid that estimate is. Savings are always calculated as coming mostly in the out years when a new congress, administration and world conditions will have made current projections meaningless.

American industry receives many kinds of tax breaks and production incentives from federal, state and local governments while its executive leaders and board members scream for smaller and less regulatory government: a few of them, such as the infamous Koch brothers, underwriting extreme right wing movements in favor of almost no government at all. However, no segment of American industry is coddled as much as agriculture where subsidies of one kind or another have become an essential part of farming’s revenue stream. Talk about welfare addicts, agriculture wins the crown with no second place in sight.

Perhaps this new idea is a good one in some way. Maybe it’s needed to preserve and protect American agriculture. I live in the rural west. We depend on a profitable agricultural economy to drive everything else. I want our ag. industry to prosper. So I’m open to hearing the case for it. What distresses me is the predominant far right wing political culture of our region that despises government and delights in the most goofy of the right wing candidates and their policies. There seems to be no recognition that the only reason agriculture flourishes is the support it receives from government through direct payments, crop insurance, cut rate electricity, diverted water, and marketing assistance. A little recognition of that, and some gratitude toward the American taxpayer for making it possible, would be appreciated.

The petulant side of me thinks maybe we should start downsizing government by eliminating all farm support programs in their entirety. In the meantime, I find the politics of the region’s agricultural interests to be naive, terribly disingenuous, and frankly disrespectful of the value of government in general.

I'd love to tell the story, but I don't know it

2011-11-02T10:20:00.000-07:00

Once again, while at an ecumenical clergy gathering, I heard the call for the Church to become missional, this time from a Presbyterian. It’s the theme of the year I guess. The call to become missional is usually prefaced by the assertion, without fear of contradiction, that the Church and its congregations have spent decades focussed on themselves, turned inward to the exclusion of a world in need just outside their doors.

I don’t think that’s true, at least not in the way it seems to be said. The Church, in all of its institutional manifestations, has been exceedingly aware of and responsive to the world in need, whether local or overseas. The same cannot always be said of those who sit in the pews. My experience with them indicates that most are so burdened with the issues of their own lives that they give only passing thoughts to other matters. Their passing thoughts tend to be cast in the form of a check and some hope that someone else in the congregation is paying attention to them and doing something about them on behalf of all. Thankfully that is often the case.

However, I think there are two other more serious problems that get buried under the rubric of becoming missional. One is complacency and the other is the lack of a story to tell.

I worked for over a year with a congregation that had serious structural problems with their building. The majority of its leaders just wanted their church to get back to the way it used to be so that they could be the congregation they used to be. They were fairly honest about it. They wanted to return to a place of comfortable complacency and away from the anxiety of a troubling future. Complacency seems to set in whenever a congregation feels comfortable that at long last all their major concerns have been met. The sermons are good, pastoral care is competent, the music is just right, the roof no longer leaks, the budget is almost balanced, the few kids in Sunday School seem happy with it and there are enough teachers, coffee hour has been taken care of, the congregation gives a tidy sum for outreach to the poor and needy. Aah, we can sit back and relax. That’s complacency, and it’s a congregation killer. It is not to say that congregations must always be on the edge, driven by organizational adrenaline to a constant state of agitation. It is to say that doing the work God has given us to do in the name of Christ Jesus cannot end with self satisfaction that, having built our bigger barn to house our stuff, all is well and we can comfortably eat, drink and be merry.

The second problem, not having a story to tell, is more difficult because solving it is the antidote to complacency. If being missional has something to do with proclaiming the good news of God in Christ through word and deed, it can only be done by having a story to tell. It has to be a story that anyone and everyone can tell, and it has to be a story that speaks of and about the community, not just individuals.

Unfortunately, having that story has often meant some kind of personal testimony about how I once was blind, but now I see and you can be too if you only accept Jesus as your personal savior. I’m not opposed to that kind of testimony, although, and as a personal matter, I find its practitioners to be off putting. The story that needs to be told is the story of our people, our shared faith, and our struggles with what it means for us to be followers of Jesus Christ. That’s a corporate story, the story of community, and it’s learned within the boundaries of our denominations with their traditions and teachings. If one knows the story it’s much easier to tell and probably more effective than the more commonly understood personal testimony of how one was saved. In fact, telling the corporate story makes it possible for there to be more conversation about how that corporate story has become your personal story, or mine.

Sadly, few members of our congregations know the corporate story, the story of our community of faith. I suspect that for most what makes a Presbyterian different from an Episcopalian is that the Presbyterians are located on Birch at First while the Episcopalians are on Catherine at Birch. Our traditions and teachings are important. We cannot have a story to tell if we don’t know the story of our people and our shared history and traditions. We cannot tell that story if it is not also our own story.

If we are to become truly missional, whatever that means, then we must do something to teach our story better than we do so that our members know it and make their own. I think we might be amazed at how easy it would become for our members to tell that story in any place at any time, and how powerfully it would encourage missional discipleship.

Let Them Eat Cake

2011-10-27T20:24:00.000-07:00

Over the last decade or so major corporations in every industry improved productivity and the bottom line by eliminating jobs and forcing down rates of pay for employees other than those at the top. At the same time, the American economy was driven partly by unthinking consumer spending spurred on by sophisticated marketing techniques. And I don’t think we can overlook that it was also driven by spending required to sustain two inane but unfunded wars. The combination of consumer and national deficit spending was a bubble bound to burst, and it did.

Oddly enough the current, and no doubt brief, joy over modest improvements in GDP growth rates is the result of increased consumer spending while consumer income and levels of unemployment have remained stagnant. We need to get something straight. A nation cannot simultaneously force middle and lower incomes to remain stagnant (or decline) while encouraging greater savings, paying down on consumer debt and building a revitalized economy on consumer spending.

An unnamed wire service reporter wrote today that, “Economist believe that growth in consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of economic activity, will be restrained until incomes start growing at healthier levels. That is unlikely until hiring picks up.” At the same time, Census Bureau data show that between 1979 and 2007 the top 1 percent of households saw their incomes rise 273 percent while middle income households saw theirs go up 40 percent and low income households 18 percent. It looks like a systemic problem, and maybe it is in one way or another. The greater reality is that it is an ethical problem that lies squarely in the laps of boards of directors and senior management in major corporations and investment funds.

For the economy to truly recover we must adopt a new ethic, one in which low and middle income wage earners are enabled to see their incomes rise while top earners see theirs level off. The likelihood of that happening is not great. The government has little power to change things except through tax policy, which is not a very effective tool for things such as this. Where the problem lies is from where the solution must come, but human greed is such a strong and seductive force that I don’t think it will.

The more likely result will be for income inequality to continue to grow. The economy will enter a years long period of tepid growth fueled more by selling whatever we can over seas than anything else. And most Americans will see their standard of living slowly deteriorate. It may not be all bad. Average Americans will learn that there is a limit to how many flat screen televisions, boats, pickups and ATVs they really need. They will discover the benefits of community colleges and inexpensive entertainments. Incomes will slowly catch up to declining home prices for some, and others will find the life of a renter not all that bad. The rich will still be rich of course, and behave more and more like oligarchs, but as I have written before, oligarchies are inherently unstable. Who knows, maybe we will become something like the French of the early 19^th century with the lower classes periodically rising up to depose the wealthy for a season. I hope not. Perhaps the raggedy moral force of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations will make a difference. We shall see.

Becoming Missional. Is that a new Ben & Jerry's flavor?

2011-10-21T16:25:00.001-07:00

My young friend Paul is not simply an optimist. He is a well educated, extremely bright optimist who is convinced that with the right structure, the right motivation and a little help from the Holy Spirit, the people who are elected and appointed to lead our diocese will transform the way things are done to fully accommodate the promises of a new and “missional” Church no longer turned in on itself but outward into a world hungry for the gospel. Toward that end our large rural diocese of few congregations met recently in convention to make some significant changes to the way in which it is structured.

Being a curmudgeon and realist, I have my doubts. What is missing from the equation is a recognition of the pivotal role of personality in driving organizational change that will result in a new ethos. Clergy, who are overwhelmed with the affairs of their own congregations, and lay leaders for whom the Church is just one of many obligations, are for the most part, supportive of the diocese as long as it doesn’t do anything to mess up their already messed up lives. They’re willing to go along with any new idea promising a new and revitalized Church as long as being new and revitalized doesn’t actually change things too much.

Newton explained that inertia is a very powerful force. Organizational inertia may be the most powerful of all. It takes a powerful personality in leadership to bend an organizational ethos in a new direction, a direction that can outlast generations of personality changes. Professional sports teams know this very well as they seek out the right combination of head coach and general manager who can and will create a sustainable “winning ethos.” A few nights ago I listened to a half time panel of experts list the successful coaches who all came from the tutelage of one person. That’s the power of personality in organizational leadership.

That does not make organizational structure unimportant, nor does it take anything away from a transformational vision of the future. It simply means that organizing for transformation requires bold and competent personalities in leadership. Not to leave the power of the Holy Spirit aside, scripture is pretty clear on the Spirit’s use of human agency to provide the leadership needed. Some take a long time to establish a new way of being God’s people. Consider Moses and his forty year long basic training camp. Some show great promise but can’t deliver. Consider Zerubbabel. Even God thought he could do it, but he couldn’t. On the other hand, Ezra and Nehemiah set into motion the ethos that would guide Israel right up to and through the time of Jesus. Personality in leadership counts. For better or worse, we are still dealing with the fallout from St. Paul’s mercurial leadership personality.

In a more contemporary, secular setting, W. Edwards Deming refused to work with any corporation in which the CEO would not become the first, most ardent and most disciplined follower of Deming’s methods. Why? Because without the strong presence of a committed personality as leader, the best one could hope for is another puff of smoke, flavor of the month, buzzword burdened, time consuming distraction from real work.

Episcopalians have decided they want to become missional. OK, I think that’s a great idea. Whatever missional means, it has not ever been a central focus of our denominational ethos. We have supported many missionaries over the years and are justifiably proud of the relief and development work to which we have bent in every part of the world, sometimes bringing the gospel along with us. But being a missional people has not been our identity.

Do I know a people whose central ethos is missional? As a matter of fact I do. I work closely with members of our local Seventh Day Adventist community through participation on a committee at our local Adventist hospital and friendships with faculty at the near by Adventist university. A missional ethos is deeply embedded in the very soul of Adventism. It has matured a lot from the days when Adventist leaders convinced their followers that unless they got out there to spread the gospel, all those heathen would burn in hell, especially Catholics. Whatever its genesis, it is today grounded in continuing the work of Christ through healing the sick and educating the youth. It’s a strong missional ethos that has survived many generations of leadership, some of it pretty goofy. Moreover, Adventist congregations are just as complicated and dysfunctional as those of any other denomination. That does not seem to affect the power of their missional ethos.

I don’t want to be an Adventist. I want to be an Episcopalian rooted in our Anglican tradition. I think we have the leadership personality to become a missional diocese, and maybe even a missional denomination. I’m not one of those leadership personalities, but if I was, I would take a hard look at the Adventists to learn how they have been able to maintain a missional ethos over such a long time. I’d be especially interested in learning how a fairly small and not terribly wealthy denomination has managed to found so many hospitals, schools and colleges. Then I’d look at the Packers to learn how a publicly owned team has been able to sustain its ethos of winning, even over years of losing seasons. In both cases I imagine that the myths of personalities past and the realities of personalities present in leadership roles will be pivotal.

If I see our enthusiastic, optimistic leaders doing that, I may become less of a curmudgeon, at least on this issue.

Hitting Raw Nerves with Thoughts on Sin

2011-10-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

For some reason we seem to have a hard time talking about sin in helpful ways. In some churches it is never mentioned. In others it seems to be the only topic worthy of a sermon. In all cases, at least in contemporary American culture, the word sin has taken on a hard to define meaning that teeters somewhere between biblically illegal and disgustingly immoral. That is not helpful.

If love covers a multitude of sins, sin covers a multitude of behaviors that can be understood in many ways. For instance, I am a man who was once divorced and have long been married to a woman who was also once divorced. Is that sinful? Yes, it is. We were each married to other people under conditions in which we were not able to live into God’s promised blessings. It’s the classic missing the mark kind of sin. The bible says that divorced persons who remarry have committed adultery. Is that true? Well, I guess it is, and that also is a sin because something that God intends for the best in human relationships had not happened, or had it? Thankfully, ours is a God of second chances. Our marriage of over 27 years has been one of blessings without end from the very first day and through all kinds of weather. When people ask us if a joyfully fulfilled Christian marriage is possible, we point to ourselves and say, “Just have a look.”

When someone comes to me with a questions that begins, “Am I committing a sin if I ....,” I don’t even need to know the rest of the sentence. The answer is almost always yes. It’s what being human involves, and I don’t think that requires buying into the utterly depraved business so popular among some Calvinists. It does require further exploration of how our behavior is so often an obstacle to God’s blessings, but an obstacle that can be overcome so that we are not separated from God’s redeeming love for us.

Our sinfulness does not condemn us to eternal punishment in hell, and constant threats of that are, in my opinion, sins of great magnitude themselves. Our sinfulness is what God in Christ came to redeem - once for all.

There are, of course, sins of enormous immoral evil, and I am inclined to think that we are a bit to quick to apply our own prejudices in naming them for others but excusing them for ourselves, especially if they are corporate in nature, as in, say, the genocidal policies of our governments that erased enough Indians to make way for the European settlement of North America. But that’s for another time.

What I might close with is to touch on that very raw nerve, abortion. Since pop culture demands that we be labeled either pro-life or pro-choice, I’ll claim the pro-choice bumper sticker. But, is abortion a sin always and everywhere? Of course it is. Something has gone very wrong in the scheme of things that God would have it be for the best that life could offer. That does not mean that abortion should be made illegal. Abortion may be the least sinful and safest response. It’s a tough decision best left to the woman, her doctors and people she trusts to offer sound spiritual advice in the sure and certain faith that God’s redeeming love will be present. In the end, I have a great deal of faith in God to work it out. I have very little faith in the legislature to do it, and no faith in people who are hysterically anti abortion while showing little interest in being pro-life.

Redistribution of Wealth

2011-10-12T17:46:00.000-07:00

Multiple letters to our local editorial page have raised the alarm over liberals trying to redistribute income by taxing it away from the rich and giving it to the (undeserving?) poor. An Oklahoma acquaintance posted this cartoon on her Face Book page, all in fun she said, but it’s what she believes. There is a certain condescending self righteousness in these thoughts that makes it difficult to enter into conversation with them. The underlying attitude appears to be that the poor and unemployed are just lazy and don’t deserve any help. Help, by the way, seems to be understood only in terms of a handout with little thought given to the “help” they received and continue to receive that allows them to be not poor nor unemployed.

Federal tax and regulatory policies are powerful tools that establish the rules through which the economy is guided this way or that. Complex to the point that few can fully understand them, they have created an environment in which wealth has been systematically funneled into the hands of a relative few while limiting or eliminating the possibility of it going elsewhere. Societies where income disparities of grotesque dimensions are systemic are unhealthy societies that tend toward corruption and dissolution. Oligarchies simply do not have much staying power. They enrich some at the expense of whole nations. Societies where the possibility of acquiring wealth is equitably distributed throughout the population tend toward strong middle classes with upward mobility as a hope broadly shared and deeply believed.

It seems to me that many ultra conservatives are like the apocryphal frogs in a pot that do not realize that the rising heat will soon boil them to death. In defense of the American dream of a strong middle class and universal hope that the next generation can do even better, they seem oblivious to the reality of policies that have rigged the economy against them in the midst of public spending debates that are resolved in favor of conditions that will likely make it even harder for most to make it while protecting the position of those who have at the expense of those who have not.

It’s not about redistributing wealth by taking it from one and giving it to another, it’s about creating an environment in which the opportunity to build wealth is more widely distributed. It’s also about redistributing the definition of wealth to include physical and emotional well being, opportunity for jobs providing middle class wages and opportunity for career growth, education and skills needed for those jobs, and the physical infrastructure needed to support community life. It means less military spending, especially military spending protecting us against enemies of the last century. It means not mindless deregulation, but eliminating those that are unneeded while simplifying others and making their administration more efficient. It also means rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy with the expectation that a revitalized middle class will begin to pay higher taxes not through rate increases but through higher earnings.

Rugged libertarians would disagree. What they want is as little government as possible and let the chips fall where they may. The one thing I admire about a man like Ron Paul is that he is honest about that. Most others who rant and rave about dismantling government, and doing away with regulations, while opposing any tax increases whatsoever see that as affecting others, not themselves. They still want good roads, safe air travel, fine schools (for their kids), mortgage deductions, well populated prisons, and neighborhoods zoned to their liking. They just don’t want to pay for any of that.

A Few Thoughts on the Obama Jobs Bill and I'll get around to theology again soon

2011-10-05T09:49:00.001-07:00

It’s taken a while, but I’ve finally read the summary of each title and section in the Obama jobs bill. On the whole it’s not bad. It relies perhaps too much on the only real tool the federal government has, and that’s money. The intent of proposed tax cuts and grants is to stimulate private sector hiring in ways that will trigger additional job growth in important sectors of industry as well as better prepare some people for the more technologically demanding job market of our present times. We need that, and it could work.

So far so good. The problem with all such plans is in the inefficiency of implementation. The policy initiatives and associated cash have to pass through successive funnels of bureaucratic approvals that begin at the federal level and continue on down the food chain to the very recipients themselves. The process of implementation gets slowed down at each stage as the desired benefits are jumbled in with all the other matters that must be handled until, at last, it is their turn to flow out of the funnel into the next one. Lest anyone think I am accusing government of being overloaded with inefficient bureaucracy, I will argue that every complex organization is loaded with inefficient bureaucracy because that is the nature of complex organizations. Moreover, you don’t have to be big to be complex. My own city hall is a case in point. We are not a large city, our staff is relatively small, and no one dawdles around wasting time. Just the same, the complexity of local interests competing for municipal favor within the context of local, state and federal laws and regulations means that our little city hall is a complex organization.

In like manner, so is our local tractor dealer, fiberglass manufacturing plant and YWCA. They are all complex organizations, and even though they might each be the recipients of some of the bill’s money, they are also funnels through which everything must flow in it’s own time along with a myriad of other things that have to flow through it.

What can be done about it? President Truman assembled the Hoover (Herbert) Commission in the late 1940s to ask that question and find some answers. They did, and they did it well, but politics pretty much sank their boat. It turns out that legislators have little interest, beyond complaining in front of the camera, about streamlining government at any level. They are fond of merging and then spinning off departments and agencies, just as corporations merge and then spin off divisions and companies, but that has nothing to do with improving efficiencies. Nor are they willing to allow the executive to have the authority to do it without their approval. For what it’s worth, large corporations are not different and insurance companies are the worst.

Obviously the fewer layers of management the better. The fewer funnels through which something must pass the better. The number and complexity of administrative regulations also matters. Those who complain about over regulation and desire to eliminate regulation seem to me to be naive, ignorant or both. I’m not one to give up regulations that help insure our health and safety, but simplifying them, writing them in plain ordinary English, and paying a little attention to duplications and conflicts would go far toward improving efficiency. It only makes sense, but where would the motivation come from to do that? My guess is that it can only come from a strong executive with the authority to make and enforce a new way of doing things.

It can but doesn’t often happen in large corporations. It can and sometimes happens in smaller companies and local not for profits. It can and sometimes happens in local and even state governments. I imagine that it could happen at the federal level, but it would be very hard to accomplish, especially in today’s environment with the idiocy of Tea Partiers screaming for the dismantling of government and liberals defending the bulwarks. I’ll side with the liberals on this one, but only until sanity returns to the national scene. May it please God that happens in my lifetime.

Slaughter or be Slaughtered

2011-10-04T11:45:00.000-07:00

In the current climate of belligerent take no prisoners and back down to no one politics, one hears the constant but unheeded plea for searching out the middle ground through honest negotiation and compromise.

The problem is that the middle ground is often a boggy place where everyone is equally unhappy, certain that the other side got the best deal. A shiny face is normally put on it through public pronouncements about what a fine decision was made, and how everyone affected by it will be so much better off. Only the most naive believe that, but it’s the way we do things.

There is another way, and it has little to do with the middle ground. It involves discovering and illuminating the truth within each argument so that a decision can be made that honors all of it and incorporates as much of it as possible. Sometimes that requires deep probing because the underlying truth within any argument may have more to do with beliefs and attitudes, especially those driven by anxiousness, than by alleged facts. Indeed, when anxiety or fear is an important factor, one may even need to probe for illumination of what one is anxious about or afraid of.

I thought about that today listening to a conversation on NPR about the pros and cons of free trade agreements in which the participants appeared to really listen to each other in civil conversation allowed me to begin to hear the truth that lived in sharply differing sides. The same cannot be said for much of what passes for debate in the public arena.

Beginning with talk radio, stopping everywhere along the way, and ending up in Congress, political discourse has become one act in America’s circus of gladiatorial combat in which the only objective is to shut down the other as quickly as possible with the most invective as possible. Slaughter or be slaughtered, is that the game we have to play? That’s very sad, and it’s terribly disappointing to see so many self ascribed Christians playing it with abandon.

Who is the Investor?

2011-10-03T18:45:00.001-07:00

The stock market took another plunge today. A volatile market, so they say. Reliable news sources were full of the usual patter about how investors dumped stock. Not so long ago the same reliable news sources reported on investors in feeding frenzies. It’s not true. Those dumpy sellers and frenzied feeders are not investors. They are merely managers of other peoples’ money. I am an investor, along with hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of others whose retirement funds and savings are invested in the stock market. We pay the money managers to be good stewards of our investments, but good stewards are hard to find. There is too much distance between my money and their trades. My money is hidden within huge funds so that the funds appear to be owned by no one in particular. They are just big piles of money that money managers get to play with as they bet this way and that on rumors, unverified information, the mood of the market or whether Vladimir Putin’s Full Monty photo made it onto a campaign poster in some obscure Siberian town.

Who can blame them? They don’t make any money for themselves off the performance of my investments. They make it, like any gambler, off lucky winning streaks, both long and short, abetted by some skill and good timing, accidental or otherwise. They make it off fees for trading, fees for managing, fees for packaging and fees for things that are hidden somewhere in their statements. I’d like to have some respect for them, but just can’t bring myself to it.

I’m luckier than most. My investments are being managed by a middle man of sorts, a local trust department that works hard to find and stick with funds and fund managers focussed on company performance with products and services in markets that have been well analyzed. The net result is fewer wild bets, a little less on the upside and a lot less on the downside. But that does not keep me, or others like me, from suffering fools not gladly.

Celebrating the assassination of al-Awalaki

2011-10-01T09:07:00.000-07:00

I am deeply saddened by the celebratory language surrounding the assassination of al-Awalaki. It is a grim business not worthy of celebration. No doubt there are dozens of arguments justifying it. Perhaps, at some level, it was necessary. At least some people thought so. But this is not a video game. There are no points earned for taking out a bad guy, no higher level to achieve for skillfully handling the robot controls of a drone and its missile. This is the reality of politics by assassination.

I regret that America has joined the ranks of those who seek blood for blood through assassination. I fail to see how that leads us closer to whatever security is either at home or abroad. Vendetta is not justice, and, it seems to me, does little more than engage us in the endless cycle of blood feuding that can go on for generations reaching ever deeper into the soul of a nation.

Says God through the voice of Ezekiel, “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked,...and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live?”

Skylights for the Soul

2011-09-30T11:27:00.000-07:00

My wife, Dianna, will soon have a couple of skylights in her studio to let the light shine in. The project got me thinking about what we have to do to let the light shine into our own lives. It seems to me that there are two problems. One is that we are too eager to sing “This little light of mine” when, in plain fact, we do not have a light, little or otherwise. The other is that we give too little thought to the work required to allow God’s light to shine into us, much less through us to others.

I continue to struggle with the discontinuity between what we profess, and sometimes sing about, in worship and how that gets lived out in daily life. Maybe my angst comes from living in a conservative region where the few who profess to be Christian also tend toward the politics of rugged individualism based on a social ethic firmly rooted in the brambles of 19^th century laissez faire with no apparent awareness of how much their own lives have been made possible by public policies that have organized collective resources for their benefit.

At the same time, I wonder how I, as pastor and teacher, can be more effective in helping those whom I am called to lead to adopt whatever personal disciplines will work for them that will allow God’s light to shine into their souls. While I’m at it, I wonder about that for myself as well. Perhaps you do also. What is needed for there to be skylights of the soul? How many have them and what do they say about them? How many know they don’t, and what do they have to say about that? How many don’t have a clue one way or the other, and don’t care?

Rural Clergy as Teams?

2011-09-29T11:52:00.001-07:00

I attended a regional clergy gathering yesterday. Between active and retired clergy I think there were maybe fifteen of us, plus the bishop. We were gathered from an area extending maybe 160 miles from one end to the other in which there are ten parishes that, on a map, are strung out on an arcing line following the Yakima and Columbia River valleys. It was a good meeting, a reunion of sorts for clergy who are not very often able to gather like this.

We began, like good clergy do, with a little prayer and bible study, notably Ephesians 4.11-16 in which we are called to equip the saints for the work of ministry to build up the body of Christ. There were three questions for reflection that were to lead our group discussion:

In what ways do we, as a clergy team, honor the diversity of gifts among us?
In what ways doe we, as a clergy team, cultivate the unity that God intends for us?
In what ways can our example “promote the body’s growth here in our diocese?

I had a problem with the questions and it centered on the word team. What is a team? Think of the teams you know about or played on. At some level they are organized, trained, disciplined and coordinated to pursue a common goal within certain rules of engagement. I am on some church teams in our diocese. The boards and committees on which I serve are teams that work pretty well. I am on some teams here in town; one at the local Adventist hospital is especially rewarding since they have made room for and honored my presence as an Episcopalian.

The group gathered around the table at yesterday’s clergy meeting was not a team. We are colleagues in some sense. For the most part, we are genuinely fond of each other. We even work together in twos and threes from time to time and for particular reasons. Each of us, in our own congregations, has teams with which we work, but as a group gathered for this day of collegiality and prayer, a day which we will not see again for many months, we are not a team. It was a good day. We rejoiced in each other’s company. We all think we should do it more often, but our lives filled with congregational leadership, families and community obligations make it unlikely.

Noting the rural nature of our diocese with its long distances between towns and cities, the old bugaboo of isolation was raised, but it seemed to sink almost as fast as it arose. We are not isolated, we are separated by distance. Isolation evokes images of solitary confinement in which one either has no access to others or is prevented from enjoying whatever access might be around. We are not isolated unless we choose to be isolated. We are separated by long distances, and, if we want the face-to-face company of other Episcopal clergy, it takes some effort to make that happen.

That brings up the issue of honoring the diversity of gifts among us. Because we are not able to socialize frequently as a group, we really don’t know each other well enough to know what gifts each may have. That is not universally true. There are clusters of clergy, two here, three there, who live near each other, like each other, and get together often enough to know each other quite well. But as a group? No.

In the end, I believe that the desire to see widely dispersed clergy in a rural area working together as a well oiled team is an impractical expectation. What is both desirable and practical is the expectation that they can become more collegial, and that’s a good thing.

Do You Love Jesus?

2011-09-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

Do you love Jesus? It’s a common question. You’ve heard it before. I guess if you can get the answer down in the right way, you’ve got it made. Just the same, I think it’s the wrong question. When Jesus asked Peter if he loved him, he intended the question to set the stage for Peter to become a shepherd in his own right. So the question, however tempting is not whether we love Jesus but whether we love others as Jesus loved us.

That’s a problem. It’s an easy thing for Christians to say that they love Jesus, either because they know they are supposed to say it, or because they believe that they really do love Jesus. It is not an easy thing to love others as Jesus loved us. That requires that we pay close attention to the incarnate Christ, observing how he interacted with others. What did he do? What did he say? How did he act? Paying close attention to these things is what will guide us toward what it means to love one another as he loved us.

One thing stands out. He was fully present to each person he encountered regardless of the noise and chaos surrounding them. He was full of questions showing genuine interest in what the other wanted, was thinking or needed. More often than not he firmly but gently led others into a deeper understanding of God and the kingdom of God that was at hand. Even when addressing crowds he spoke to them in the places where they were, illustrating his points with stories invoking the common things of ordinary, daily life. He did not avoid controversy but met it head on, rarely showing his temper and even then mostly with his own closest followers.

Not long ago a colleague asked a group of clergy how they would respond to someone who wanted to know how they do what they do when face-to-face with traumatic situations. Most of them responded by giving testimony about their faith in Christ and inviting the hypothetical questioner to do the same. What would Jesus do? Not that, I suspect. The gospels lead me to think that he would have asked his petitioner to say more, prompting him or her to probe a little deeper to allow the central God question to rise to the surface and then go from there. I suppose a philosopher would call it probing for the prior question.

Loving others as Jesus loved us requires that sort of patience and willingness to meet the other in the place where they are, and you can’t meet them there unless you are willing to be there with them. That’s hard work. It’s so much easier just to say you love Jesus and let it go at that.

Of Gangs and Parasites

2011-09-15T13:54:00.001-07:00

Gangs are a problem in many communities in our part of the country. For the most part they have migrated up from California along drug distribution routes and preyed mostly, but not exclusively, on young first and second generation Mexican immigrants. Our valley had been spared most of it until recently, but slime tends to spread into unlikely places if it can find a path of little resistance. And so, perhaps due to our own complacency, we seem to have a gang problem just like many others in the Pacific Northwest.

Whatever else they are, gangs are essentially parasitic. They can only exist if there is a reasonably healthy host community on which to feed. They add nothing of value and their only product is the erosion and slow death of the good things of community life. When illegal drugs are added to the formula, as they often are, they make users and addicts in our community directly complicit in the ravages of rape and killing rampant among the drug lord wars south of the border.

The motivation for gang membership has been explained in many ways, and perhaps it is asking too much for middle school age recruits to think about gangs as parasites. But it’s not asking too much to be assertive about letting gang leaders know that they are parasites. And it’s not too much to ask that the community itself do its own hard work of self inoculation against parasitic infection. For instance, I’ve heard several well informed citizens argue for more resources for law enforcement to deal with gangs. Good for them, but it’s not enough. The community cannot rely on the police and sheriff’s office to do all the work. It’s not just a law enforcement problem. It’s a problem that has something to do with our willingness to tolerate community conditions that invite and nourish parasitic gangs. Education, housing, racism, neighborhood conditions, neighborhood leadership, public health, access to personal health care, economic development providing jobs with some hope for a decent standard of living, all that and more are conditions that must be addressed to create an environment in which the community prospers and gangs don’t.

It’s not an easy task. Communities that dump it all in the laps of law enforcement can expect little more than rear guard actions. Communities that try to get by on the cheap, who, in miserly anxiety, are afraid to invest in present and future needs for a healthy community, are just setting themselves up for gangs to prosper. Our community is proud of its fiscal conservatism. When that turns into mean spirited cheapness, the doors to decline are opened wide and parasitic infection is invited in.

Sex and the Golden Man

2011-09-13T11:31:00.001-07:00

I attended a lecture Arthur Schlesinger maybe twenty-five years ago in which, reflecting on his recent book, he talked about the impending tribalization of America. It was happening, he said, but it was not a good thing. Someone asked what was needed to counteract it. Sex, he said. Michener had a similar thought in his 60s era book, Hawaii, where he idealized the “Golden Man,” the Hawaiian of whom it could not be said which race was his dominant feature.

I thought about that when I officiated at my Goddaughter’s wedding a few days ago. The melange of what we usually call characteristics of ethnicity and race (whatever that means) made it impossible to say for certain who was there, using those old stereotypes. European, African, Hispanic and Indian were mixed in such complex ways that the most one might say is that these are Americans.

It’s still common to want to put people into clearly marked boxes that we assign to skin color: black, white, brown, etc. To that we often demand the addition of ethnic or cultural identifiers such as: African, Mexican, Chinese, Caribbean, and, of course, Ordinary, meaning white Northern European fully immersed in the cultural ethnicity of Middle America. Needless to say, rank and file Ordinary people would take issue with that as they claim their unique ways of being Southern, New Englanders, Northern Californians, etc. It’s a dubious claim, but if it makes them feel better it’s OK with me.

The point is that something new is happening, and it’s happening among a new generation that rejoices in their ethnic heritage without letting it strangle their self identity or shutter their engagement with others who are not like themselves. I doubt if Michener’s Golden Man will ever emerge as the norm, but Schlesinger was right, plain old sex is making a difference.

A National Consensus on being American

2011-09-08T11:54:00.001-07:00

Somewhere back in the early ‘80s, I wrote an essay asserting that the cultural disequilibrium caused by the civil war was not finally worked out until the voting rights act of a hundred years later. At the same time, I opined that the cultural upheaval of the Vietnam Era might take almost as long to work itself out. It was during that period when long trusted symbols and institutions of American cultural stability were challenged by all and rejected by many, but nothing was offered in their place.

The roles of the church, women, sex, marriage, fraternal organizations, business and government were called into question. If no one over thirty could be trusted, then no one could be trusted. Almost forty years have gone by, and I don’t think we’ve got it worked out yet. The current media driven popularity of Tea Party type politics and the hard right wing turn in Congress, is, in my opinion, the death throes of a time gone by, a time recalled in heavily filtered memories of the 1950s. They accuse the president of having no new ideas, but all of theirs are relics of a former age that have never been successful in promoting economic or social well being. Their only achievement has been to make the rich richer, the middle class poorer, and the poor locked in the prison of their poverty. The Horatio Alger rags to riches yardstick for what anyone can do with a little pluck and hard work is true mostly in romantic fiction, seeing reality in a few well known cases where pluck and hard work were aided by extraordinary circumstances of good luck frequently abetted by ethically challenged cunning.

However, the current dominance of that kind of so called conservatism raises an interesting question. What happened to all the hippie radicals of former decades? There weren’t that many of them to begin with. They just made a lot of noise, not unlike the hard right wingers of today. Moreover, someone once said that today’s radicals are tomorrow’s stuffed shirts. So who knows? What about all the ordinary liberals? The left wing, hard nosed community organizer Saul Alinsky (Rules for Radicals) had no love for rank and file liberals whom he considered to be weak kneed, bumbling, incompetent do-gooders lacking the courage to do the hard work of political change. Maybe he was right. In any case, it is today’s right wingers who have learned how to apply Alinsky’s methods to their brand of politics.

The point is that the national consciousness, if there is such a thing, has not yet figured out what it means to be an American in a way that the country can more or less agree to. Anxiety surrounding the aftermath of 9/11 has not helped. It has only fertilized the ground for seeds of unwarranted fear and xenophobic hysteria aided and abetted by the worst of yellow journalism. One possible outcome could be the election of a right wing government in 2012. That would drive the nation into the nether world of an even deeper recession accompanied by attempts to restrict civil liberties while unleashing opportunities for greater domestic violence and environmental degradation. If elected, it would be the government we deserve. It might also be the bitter medicine we need to swallow so that we can come to more stable national consensus of who we want to be as classically liberal Americans.

The Art and Artifice of Begging

2011-09-06T02:00:00.000-07:00

We saw quite a few beggars in both Barcelona and Paris, cities where we spent enough time to get around on our own. They seemed to come in three sets. The first were women of an uncertain age, always dressed in something that looked vaguely North African. Some came, cup thrust out, in a straightforward, pleading way, offering a very well rehearsed and abundantly sarcastic thank you when no coin was given. Others assumed prayer poses in the middle of the sidewalk where they would stay motionless for a very long time. It’s just a con, we were warned, and I agree, but they were still excruciatingly poor and their form of begging is humiliating, hard work with little to show for it at the end of the day. I noticed that those most likely to give a coin were truck and cab drivers, and other less poor people passing by.

The second set were young men who set up blankets in public places on which they displayed cheap trinkets for sale. I’m not sure but suspect that they were well warned to scoot at the first sign of police. They also were very poor and, for the most part, sufficiently unclean to be smelled before seen. The third set were young women looking less poor and a good deal cleaner who professed to be deaf mutes seeking signatures and donations for a deaf charity. They were in many places, but we enjoyed watching one group in lively conversation on the steps of a church during their break.

Who knows, maybe they are all related in some way. Outright begging, shoddy merchandise and gentle scams all add up to one thing. They are still poor, and it is a lousy, humiliating way to make a living. Probably the best thing about it is the psychological payoff to have separated some money from “the rich” thus achieving some small sense of victory. Who are “the rich?” For them it was anyone who gave a coin or bought a piece of junk. As I said, I think most of that came from people only a little better off. The rich do give, but it’s mostly through pickpocketing.

We rich tourists may not like it much. What we don't have is any right to be smug or haughty as is our wont to do.

Reentering the Womb

2011-09-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

We went on our first cruise many years ago. It was the Alaska cruise up the inland passage in celebration of my parents fiftieth wedding anniversary. The whole family went as it then existed, all sixteen of us. None of our children were married yet. One nephew was young enough that we worried about his whereabouts and safety. The excitement of it all, the novelty of a ship and the extraordinary scenery made it a trip of a lifetime that each of us remembers as the very best time.

The years have fled. Our children are now in their forties. Our oldest grandchild has her drivers license. By age alone I have become the patriarch of the family. A few years ago we rediscovered cruising as a way to see parts of the world that we might not otherwise have the chance. To be sure, it’s only a sampling, but one can experience and learn a lot from observant sampling. We recently returned from Europe on a trip that included, as part of it, a cruise from England, across the Channel to stops in Holland, Belgium, France, Portugal and Spain.

It was on that part of the trip that I began to think of the cruise ship as a womb experience, which may help explain why it is such a popular way of travel. The womb is the ultimate safe haven in which the developing child has every need met without asking and without responsibility. Birth is the traumatic exit from that Eden into a world in which demands must be made, responsibility learned and consequences endured. No wonder psychological theory has often focussed on the womb and birth as a key to emotional problems in adulthood. No matter how much we might like it, we cannot return to the secure, nourishing environment of the womb. Or maybe we can.

A cruise ship is something like a womb for adults. It is, even on the largest ships, a tightly compact, secure place in which every need is provided. Nourishment in almost any form is provided day and night. Staterooms are cleaned and replenished as if by magic. Entertainment abounds in every venue. Pools, spas and workout rooms pamper the body. The digitally encoded ship’s ID card establishes one’s right to be on board, and gives the added illusion of the ability to afford whatever one wants at any time with a simple swipe and a personal thank you by name. At ports of call one can experience something like birth by leaving the ship and entering an alien world. Like newborns everywhere, the newly birthed are often whisked off to nurseries in the shape of tour busses attended by nurses in the form of English speaking guides. The more adventuresome can go on their own, but like toddlers everywhere they seldom go far. They test their new freedom with some apprehension and are generally quick to return.

Unlike the reality of human birth, cruise passengers are able to reenter the womblike security of the ship at the end of each day’s landing. And I think this is key. For many, the psychologically infantile desire to reenter the womb may be little more than a fantasy worked out on the therapist’s couch, but I suspect that it is a subconsciously lived reality for many cruise ship passengers. The womb can be reentered! Security, for a price, can again be yours. The excitement of new birth at each port is made less anxiety ridden by the sure and certain knowledge that the womb awaits one’s return. I suspect that is also why the last night on board is so difficult for many. It is time to leave the fantasy of the infantile and reenter the world of the adult in which the maternal womb is not even a memory.

Fear and Ignorance

2011-07-31T07:31:00.001-07:00

The current debate over the debt ceiling has left me stunned at the bullheaded self confidence of so called conservatives whose idea of a future America takes the form of a free wheeling laissez faire society in which all enjoy the totality of freedom from an intrusive government that would otherwise rule their lives. It's a facade behind which lies the reality of poverty for most, wealth for the few, the loss of civil rights and the probability of near dictatorial control of some over the lives of many.

The rallying cry is for small government as if smallness in and of itself is a good thing, and with no discernible interest in effective government. Sophisticated political operatives capitalize on a combination of fear and ignorance to manipulate the acquisition of power for their own benefit and the benefit of their employers.

One friend, an otherwise sensible person, expressed his growing fear over the idea of deficit spending and raising the debt ceiling based on nothing other than a gut response to what he heard on television and radio. Another acquaintance posted a note railing against the percentage of GDP absorbed by federal government revenues as if they were a subtraction from productivity rather than a component of productivity. He also got his numbers wrong, but that's another matter. He is one of those who wants federal revenues to be capped at 18% of GDP. What the magic of 18% is escapes me, and the whole idea of a revenue cap makes no sense at all. My guess is that he is also among those who believe that lower taxes are always and everywhere better than higher taxes. That only makes sense if you don't think about it.

A conservative commentator on CNN or PBS, can't remember which, kept echoing the old shibboleth that we were saddling future generations with nothing but government debt. It makes sense if you don't think about it. And, it would probably be true if the conservatives get their way on national economic policy. Deficit spending and national debt are important, and we must do better reining in both. Having said that, I would remind readers that the same "saddling the future with debt" argument has been around for a long time with not much to back it up. Consider, for instance, the debt incurred in WWII and Korea. It was enormous for the time, and it was said that it would impoverish the children of that era as they grew up. I was one of those children. My parent's generation, my generation and my children's generation have not been saddled with the payment of that debt. The economy grew to absorb it and also provide us with an opportunity to enjoy a comfortable style and quality of life.

That does not mean that a nation can be profligate with spending and debt. It does mean that effective government and policies that contribute to economic health are more important than hysterical fear mongering.

My own member of Congress, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, has consistently voted along the Tea Party lines. I used to accuse her of being a Boehner puppet, but given the last few days, I'm not so sure. Maybe Cantor pulls the strings. In any case, she first ran for Congress as an evangelical Christian. That claim has dropped into the background to be replaced by a double claim of quiet but consistent voting with the extreme right wing while mumbling kind and gentle bromides about veterans and farmers.

In short, it's not a happy time for the nation, and not a happy time for me personally as day after day I watch with stunned amazement at the growing political power of an oligarchy that is skillfully manipulating the ignorance of a frightened public. Reminds me of some of the French revolutions of the 19th century that always seemed to end up with another dictator of one kind or another.

Road Trips

2011-07-22T16:05:00.000-07:00

Road trips are not a part of our ordinary way of getting around, but we are on one. Along with my sister and brother-in-law, who flew in from Honolulu just for the privilege of this adventure, we drove from Walla Walla, WA to Minneapolis, MN for the triple purpose of going to my first ever high school reunion, visiting our youngest sister and family at their "lake cabin up north," and seeing a couple of national parks along the way.

It's easy to forget just how big our nation is when one never travels, or flies, as we usually do, from point A to point B. Glacier and Teddy Roosevelt National Parks were our two must see stops along the way. Glacier is overpoweringly awesome in it's grandeur, but it was also crowded enough that all the short day hiking trails were overwhelmed with people and not a parking place was to be had. Although, to be fair, the east side just outside the park was all but deserted. By the time we got there it was also time to move on. Teddy Roosevelt, in far western North Dakota, was another story. This enormous combination of badlands, canyons and ranch land along the Little Missouri River was wide open and begging for exploration.

Having said that, it's the land in between that inspires wonder. A thousand miles of open prairie, small towns and huge farms and ranches interspersed with open pit coal mines, oil and gas development, and the railroad. The wealth it creates benefits the locals at the most modest of levels, the bulk of it flowing to the coasts and to the relative few at the top of the economic food chain. A little over a hundred years ago, as immigration flowed into the Great Plains, local progressives formed the Grange and other organizations to fight for a fair share of the profits from their labor. Now the region is losing population, and what political energy there is has been largely seduced by the paranoia of the far right wing so that its followers have become the agents of policies that enrich others at the cost of their own impoverishment. Go figure.

But I digress, I'm inclined to think it would do everyone good to take a road trip or two across the land. I don't imagine it would matter what route, as long as it took in the great expanse of the plains and prairie. It's too easy to become so locally parochial that we lose perspective on what it means to be a nation of united states. It's not just a matter of isolated big city folks wondering if 'O' states such as Oklahoma, Ohio and Oregon are lumped together somewhere "out there." A local guy of my acquaintance once told me that he was planning a trip "back east." I asked him where and he said Nebraska, which to him was more or less somewhere near New Jersey.

Geography is important. Knowledge and experience of it is how we put perspective into our ideas about who we are and who we want to be. Sadly, I know more than a few who travel a great deal by car all over the country and never learn a thing about the history, culture or economics of the places through which they drive. I marvel at their lack of curiosity about almost everything but where to get the best deal on an all you can eat buffet, or who are obsessed with knowing the numbers of highways but are disinterested in the knowing about the people who live along them. Maybe it's always been that way. Sad.

Retired Rectors/Pastors as Members?

2011-07-11T12:15:00.001-07:00

This last Saturday and Sunday I celebrated at the parish from which I retired three and a half years ago. The rector was away at camp, and his normal sources of backup were otherwise engaged. I imagine it took some courage on his part to even ask me. To tell the truth, I was a little nervous about it too. Things are done differently now. The Saturday night service is a variation on a eucharistic prayer from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer. Beautiful, but unfamiliar to me. Sunday always includes a children’s sermon, something at which I am truly lousy.

It’s not like we’ve been totally absent. When we are in town and I’m not preaching elsewhere, that’s where we worship, so we are still well connected, but as parishioners, not clergy. As it turned out, everything went well. It felt good to be leading worship in a familiar place among (mostly) familiar people. Selfishly, it also felt good to know that I did not have to open up, double check every arrangement, resolve a few last minute issues, and then hang around to turn out the lights and lock up. I could just relax and be the visiting clergy.

St. Paul’s is a bit unusual among congregations of almost any denominations in that it has two former rectors in the congregation, both me and my predecessor. It seems to work OK. I think that is because each of us is comfortable in our roles and supportive of one another as good friends. Most important, we retired rectors are very intentional about avoiding even the appearance of second guessing the current rector. To top it off, the congregation also includes two other retired priests from nearby communities. A rector who as not confident in his or her abilities might have some difficulty with that. I wonder if any readers have had their own experiences with retired rectors/pastors remaining as members of the congregation?

The Right Direction or Wrong? Wrong of course!

2011-07-11T11:27:00.001-07:00

I’ve been getting solicitation mailings for years from various Republican organizations. Most often they include a survey purporting to show how responsive they are to what the public really wants. The questions are of the “When did you stop beating your wife?” variety. It’s been great sport responding to them, especially if they include a self addressed stamped envelop. I get plenty of fund solicitations from the Democrats but fewer surveys, and the ones they do send tend to be less obviously tilted toward the preferred answers. There is one question on every one, regardless of party: Do you think the country is going in the right direction or the wrong direction?

I hear that same inane question almost daily on radio and television. Newspaper polls often report on it, and today a League of Women Voters survey arrived with the very same question embedded. What, pray tell, is a direction as it applies to the policies, current conditions and possible future conditions of a nation? Is it north, east, west or south? Is it left or right, up or down? Is it this way or that?

My own guess is that it’s a measure of fear and anxiety that may have no basis in fact and little likelihood of a future reality. Moreover, we can all claim that the nation is going in the wrong direction for many, different and opposite reasons. So knowing that some percentage of us believe we are headed in the wrong direction tells us exactly nothing, except, perhaps, as a rough measure of undifferentiated public anxiety. Parenthetically, we hardly ever report that the nation is going in the right direction. What fun is that?

For instance, my conservative friend Don is fearful that we are headed toward European style socialism. He’s been sure of that for decades, and it’s the wrong direction. I, however, am fearful that we are headed toward corporate driven plutocracy masquerading as democracy, and it is also the wrong direction. We’re probably both wrong, but that doesn’t keep us from giving the same answer to those idiotic surveys. We are joined in our answer by those fearful of being overrun by Sharia law, illegal immigrants, ecological disaster, gay marriage, the EPA, whale hunting and the Rapture.

The whole thing is capped off by semi-hysterical television newscasters breathlessly reporting on the latest numbers. If it wasn’t such a serious matter it would make a great Saturday Night Live routine.

Adventures in Speechifying

2011-06-29T17:24:00.000-07:00

Some weeks ago I was asked to give the keynote address at the annual convention of a statewide organization. The subject seemed a bit vague, something about life, or maybe leadership, the man said. About how long? “Oh, as long as you want, we have all morning.” You know as well as I do that getting something good out of this was going to be difficult, but it was an exceptional honor and so I agreed.

I decided to resurrect some old notes used in leadership classes years ago, and that were based on a fascinating lecture I had attended by one of the Drs. Menninger some forty years ago. The subject was developing the habits of emotional maturity as keys to enjoying the fullness of life. I worked up a draft, had it approved by my editor in chief (wife), reworked it a couple of times, and felt comfortable with it.

Yesterday was the day. The presider, hurried by many last minute details, collared me to ask what it was I was going to do again - an invocation or benediction or whatever they call it? Not a good sign. How would I like to be introduced? Did I have anything written down? I gave him a one paragraph intro. “I don’t like to read things out loud,” he said, “I’ll just wing it.” Another dark omen.

So there I was staring out at four hundred disinterested faces who had no idea who I was, or why I was asked to speak, or even if a speech was on the agenda. I’ve been a teacher, preacher and public speaker for most of my adult life, but I confess that my usual savoir faire was hiding somewhere. I plodded on, got politely warm applause, and made my escape. Another humbling, not humiliating, but humbling experience. For what it’s worth, here is a short version of what I had to say.

Before you start looking for the exit, I promise, no altar call or anything like it. What I do want you to consider is the fullness of life that we are all called to enjoy, that some of us run away from, that some of us find, and that most of us struggle with, sometimes well and sometimes not so well. In other words, you’re no good to others if you are not good to yourself, and you’re not good to yourself if you don’t pay attention to what’s going on around you and in you to take care of yourself physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Entering into the fullness of life requires the cultivation of the ability to honestly deal with reality without getting bent all out of shape about it. Too many of us live in half worlds of self deception, pretending that the world is something other than what it really is. Too many of us live fearful lives, constantly afraid of what other people think about us or do to us. A full life requires us to be honest about who we are and where we are, and not waste emotional energy worrying about what others think because others are too busy thinking about themselves to give us much notice anyway.

Honesty about reality, about who we really are, and what the world really is, requires the ability to deal with change easily, to be adaptable to changing conditions and issues. Nothing in life has ever stood still, but change seemed to come at a more leisurely pace not too many years ago. My dad was able to build an entire career on the engineering education he received in college in the late 1930s. You know that your technical knowledge is obsolete almost before you leave the classroom. The same is true for almost everything else in life. The pace of change is close to the speed of light. You must be flexible, adaptable and willing at all times to learn new things. What gives stability to and makes sense out of all this change is to be firmly grounded in honestly knowing yourself and the core values that guide your life decisions.

Let’s face it, you’ve got responsibilities to your self, your family, your employer, your community and to the particular clients you encounter each day. It’s one hell of a balancing act, and it requires flexibility. A person with a rigid, black and white personality who can only see right or wrong, good or bad, does not possess the tools needed to handle it. That rigid black and white way of thinking and acting may look strong, but it’s brittle and is easily broken. One must develop the discipline of flexibility, and it is a discipline.

The key to developing that discipline is learning how to be free from symptoms of unwarranted apprehension or anxiety. My boss once reminded his audience that no amount of worrying could add a single hour to your span of life or change the color of your hair. He warned that we spend too much time worrying about things we can’t do anything about or that never happened. We fail to spend enough time delighting in the good things of life that surround us on every side. That’s not to say that we don’t have things to worry about or be anxious about, we do. Each day brings it’s own, so deal with them as they come, and don’t invent more than there are.

Avoiding unnecessary worry is not the same thing as being unprepared. You plan and train all the time for unlikely events that may seldom or never happen. Sitting around chewing nails worrying about an earthquake won’t gain anything. Planning and training for it will, and it will also take away the need to worry about it. The same is true for everything else in life. Good planning and training disarms the bogeyman of anxious worry.

The antidote is the habit of generosity. There are many ways to be generous. Some of us are able to give away substantial amounts of money. Some of us are able to give away even greater amounts of love and care for our fellow human beings. Some of us are able to give away our time and talents to help where help is needed. It’s that same attitude of generosity that you must take into the outside world beyond the world of work. It is not easy to be generous in a hostile environment, and right now you live and work in a hostile political environment in which it is popular for you to be demeaned by public leaders. I can’t think of a more important role for you than to demonstrate the virtue of generosity in the community and to the community by doing for the neediest in our neighborhoods what you do for your own. It’s not a new idea. I know a fellow by the name of Paul who, quite a few years ago, wrote words of similar advice:

If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

I think Paul may have gone a little overboard using language like enemies and burning coals, but then he was never known for his diplomatic skills.

The fact is that we have to interact and get along with all kinds of people that we don’t agree with, don’t like and don’t always trust. Setting up all kinds of blustery defenses against them only leads backward to anxious fear, worry about scarcity, and rigidity in beliefs.

Going forward into the fullness of life requires the courage to find ways to relate to those people in mutually acceptable ways. That does not mean finding common ground, although we never want to rule that out. Too often the idea of common ground, finding few the things we can agree on, creates a very small playing field surrounded by the weapons we are unwilling to surrender. It doesn’t leave much to work with.

Finding ways to relate to others in mutually acceptable ways is different. It means learning to respect one another in the midst of differences. Often that means having the courage and patience to listen to the other’s story. What is it that defines their life, their beliefs and their attitudes. Knowing the other’s story opens the door to the possibility of mutually acceptable relationships without manufacturing some phony area of pretend agreement. The courage and patience to listen to one another’s stories is also a critical tool for improving marriages, surviving teenage children, and getting through a day at work with the person you least want to work with.

It’s all about living into the fullness of life in the midst of the changes and chances that life brings. Why would anyone want less than that? Why would anyone want to live with the symptoms of unwarranted anxiety when there is so much fullness of life to enjoy? Why would anyone want to live with unproductive, toxic anger generated by fear and anxiety when the fullness of life is available? LIfe is an adventure. It deserves to be lived to the fullest in childlike excitement and curiosity about what lies ahead.

Government and Private Enterprise

2011-06-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

The local state public affairs channel featured an interview with two legislative leaders discussing the recently passed budget that contains drastic cuts in social services and education while retaining tax breaks for businesses. Contrary to network interview shows, the interviewer and two legislators conversed in rational, respectful words of ordinary volume with very few interruptions of each other.

One of the legislators argued the standard conservative line that only private enterprise creates jobs and wealth; government is an obstacle to both and must be restrained as much as possible. It’s a shame that social services and education had to be cut, but the budget had to be balanced, and the stage set for economic growth.

It makes sense if you don’t think about it too much. The argument sets up private enterprise and government as opposites, or, perhaps, opponents in a win-lose game. While that resonates with some people, it’s patently false. Private enterprise and government exist in a symbiotic relationship. Establishing the proper balance between the two is the work of political negotiation in which the reality of that symbiotic relationship is acknowledged and understood.

There are three basic sets of jobs that contribute to the economic prosperity of the state. One set includes jobs connected to the production of goods and services that are sold to others elsewhere in the world. These exports bring new money into the region adding to our wealth. The second set includes jobs connected to providing goods and services to others in the region. The efficiency of these jobs is measured in part by how many times a dollar brought in from exports can be spent before it disappears. The third set includes jobs connected to the creation and maintenance of the infrastructure that make the others possible. Some of the jobs exist in the private sector and some exist in the public sector, but all contribute to the economic wellbeing of the state.

Job and wealth creation require a physical and regulatory infrastructure that only government can provide. Taxes levied to provide that infrastructure are not a drain on the private sector, but an investment in it. Among the most important parts of that infrastructure are the health, safety and education of the people. Unregulated private enterprise has proved itself incapable of managing for either the public good or the long term good of its employees. Clearly government has at least two roles. One is to craft the environment in which private enterprise can flourish. The other is to assure that that environment provides for and protects the well being of its people.

It’s a tough balancing act. Regulate but not over regulate. Tax but not over tax, and tax fairly.

I think that in Washington State we have gone too far in piling the tax burden on those least able to carry it while letting some corporate interests and the very wealthy off the hook. We have gone too far in cutting social services while failing to give serious consideration to tax increases.

We have failed to recognize that government is indeed a generator of jobs and economic growth.

Andy is Dying

2011-06-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

Andy the ten year old Shelty, very large for his breed, is dying. He’s got a rapidly growing tumor in his butt. The vet says it’s inoperable. He came into our lives as a very young puppy and was raised under the authority of Catmandu. That may be one reason why he had a hard time adjusting to other dogs. It may also explain some of his odd mannerisms, such as batting balls in a clumsy imitation of a cat. Mandu died at the ripe old age of 22. Andy’s ball batting turned into a respectable game of doggie soccer to which was added a vigorous round of backyard Frisbee.

Other dogs, or an other dog, came into his life a few years ago in the form of six month old Riley, an all boy West Highland Terrier who did everything he could to tempt Andy into playing like a dog. Sometimes it worked. Most of the time Andy remained aristocratically aloof, which did nothing to abate Riley’s adoration of him. On those occasions when Andy was taken somewhere alone, Riley would sit by the door and howl for an hour or more before finally lying down, not to move until the big guy returned.

Things are changing now, and fast. Andy is no longer confident that his rear legs will follow the ones in front, or that they will stand when the rest of him is trying to. Riley no longer tries to bait him into play. I’m his new target. Frisbee is still Andy’s favored game as long as he can stand no farther than three feet away. That way he can catch it and give it back without having to move.

I don’t know how long he will last. Maybe a few weeks. Maybe a few months. No longer. He’s not in pain as far as I can tell. Yesterday he could still climb the stairs to Dianna’s studio, although it took him several minutes to make it. Coming back down was something like a moderately controlled fall. I’m not sure he can do it today. He seems content to lie down and be petted. We’ve tried to arrange rugs on our hardwood floors to give him more traction on his regular route from the bedroom to the back door. It’s a trek he prefers not to make unless absolutely necessary.

I wonder if Riley will howl his inconsolable howl when Andy is gone. Maybe I will too.

The Dreaded 'E' Word

2011-06-12T20:26:00.000-07:00

Pentecost Sunday. The overwhelming power of the Holy Spirit to lift up drooping hands and strengthen weak knees to go out in the public square and proclaim the good news of God in Christ in ordinary everyday language. That was then. What about now?

This morning I was asked why Episcopalians seem to be so scared of the dreaded ‘E’ word. For one thing, I don’t think it’s an Episcopalian illness but one that affects all mainline churches, including the Catholics. We got used to the idea that everyone in America was either Protestant or Catholic with a few Jews tossed in. As for Protestants, the primary question was what flavor one liked best without much thought given to dogma. If youngsters left the church shortly after confirmation, so what? They would be back when married with children of their own. That was never true, but it’s taken two or three generations for it to sink in. In the meantime, why would one even think about neighborhood evangelizing? Missionaries to the heathen, yes, by all means, and what a treat to hear their stories of far off exotic places! But me in my own community? Not a chance! That’s for those odd ball doorbell ringers, and we certainly Do Not want to be confused with one of them.

That’s one part of the problem. The second is more serious. Our faithful members don’t know the story well enough to tell it in plain, ordinary, everyday language. I filled in for a friend at another rural church this morning. One long time member leaned over to my wife just before the service began to ask what Pentecost was. She knew it meant wearing something red, but what else? She remembered learning something about it in Sunday School, but that was fifty years ago. Our wonderful people, the faithful ones who show up every Sunday (Saturday if you’re SDA), not only do not know the story well enough to tell it, they do not know why their particular Church worships the way it does and teaches what it teaches. Most important, they don’t know their own story well enough to tell it.

I’m not sure what to do about that. How do you inspire in an aging congregation the love of life long learning about God as we Christians have come to know and understand God? Maybe one way is to challenge the assumption that they don’t want to learn and are unwilling to try. I don’t buy that. I believe that new and youthful life in Christian discipleship is not just possible but would be highly desired and sought after if presented in the right way. Why let a few grumpy old men and women stand in the way? Ignore them and get on with teaching the story so that it can be told.

A Few Thoughts on Gangs, Drugs and Politics

2011-06-09T12:04:00.000-07:00

Our valley, like most others areas, has a growing gang problem. Compared to other places ours is minor, an irritant to the community rather than a serious danger. Gang members seem more interested in preying on each other than anyone else. They are minor traffickers in drugs, and, I suspect, moving into loan sharking in the wake of departing unprofitable payday loan operations. That’s just a guess, but if I was a gang leader it would look like easy money to me and a racket mostly out of sight of the good citizens of the town.

I’ve only had prolonged conversations with one gang member, and he seems not simply unaware but ignorant of the parasitic nature of the beast. I think that’s partly because he is also ignorant of what makes a community healthy. The ordinary lessons of high school civics did not take root. Like any parasite, gangs need a host on which to feed. It can give nothing of value to the host. It can only suck the life out of it until both it and the host are dead. The host does not need to be all that healthy, although it needs to exist in an environment where health is possible. Parasites such as gangs seem to thrive best on hosts that are marginalized elements of the greater community. More sophisticated gangs try to sell the idea to themselves and others that they are able to live in a symbiotic relationship with the community of the marginalized. It’s a cruel charade, but it can be persuasive for some.

Where the greater community is most closely linked to our local gangs is through drugs. Local drug users, especially teens and young adults, seem oblivious to the connection between their drug use, their local sources and the violence that is snuffing out lives throughout Mexico, and, increasingly, farther south. I wonder if it would help if there was something like a Surgeon General’s warning on each packet of marijuana or cocaine? “WARNING, you paid for two assassinations, five rapes and three persons tortured when you bought this packet.” I suppose it’s a naive idea, but the naivete of several young people I know who have used “recreational” drugs is overwhelming.

We’ve tried preaching and teaching against drug use from the health angle (“This is your brain on drugs”). It was ignored or sneeringly laughed off. I wonder if making it clear that drug use makes one an accomplice to murder, rape and torture would make a difference? Maybe. But I’ll suggest yet another possibility, and it goes back to the question of high school civics. If young people and adults alike do not understand what makes for a healthy community, how are they to be held accountable for creating and sustaining one? Schools, churches and local governments are the only sources I know of where that can be taught. But what good would even the best teaching do if all one ever witnesses of politics is the carnage of extremist political rhetoric punctuated by blatant hypocrisy and scandal?

You can see where this train of thought is going. What began with some observations about local gang activity has ended up in the lap of national political commentators and leaders. Moreover, I will be bold enough to assert that it is not a balanced problem - the left is as bad as the right and they should both clean up their acts. No, whatever the faults on the so called left may be, and they are legion, they do not compare to the outrage being perpetrated on the public from the so called right.

What’s the answer? I think you know, at least if you are willing to think about it a little. What’s the outlook? Not all that promising from where I sit.

Ascension Questions?

2011-06-01T12:14:00.000-07:00

Our Tuesday morning clergy group had the usual Ascension Sunday conversation about whether Jesus’ rising on or through the clouds as he ascended to heaven above is to be taken literally. Did it really happen that way, or is it the memory of things hoped for, perhaps experienced emotionally rather than physically? The story was real enough for me as a small Sunday school child that I had hopes of landing on a cloud in a plane. I was amazed and terribly disappointed when it didn’t happen. So much for Jesus riding a cloud elevator up to heaven.

We recalled the usual condescending put down of the three story universe. A red herring if there ever was one. It’s best just to ignore that silliness. But how to understand it?

I want to suggest that the Ascension was a literal event with metaphorical meaning. I see no reason why the resurrected Jesus could not literally ascend out of sight at the time of his choosing, but I don’t think that means that he went up from earth below to a place called heaven that is somewhere above.

To go up, to rise, to be promoted, thumbs up, the sky’s the limit; all are a part of our ordinary metaphorical language in which the direction of up is understood to have a broad, complex meaning associated with other words such as better, position, status and the like. The same is true for down and its cognates as words associated with demotion, sadness, failure, and so forth. It’s all metaphorical language. It’s why, at least in English, we have to be so careful. If up and down are meant to be taken literally, we must clearly show what it is that goes up or down and where that gets to. Otherwise we can, and frequently do, get into trouble.

The kingdom of God, says Jesus, is already with us, but we cannot appreciate it fully in this life. Whatever and wherever heaven is, some part of it can be an element of our lives now. Yet it seems just out of our reach somewhere above us. Is it really up, above our heads? I don’t think so. It’s just the language we use to express the sure and certain hope of a fuller existence in God’s presence, an existence that transcends bodily death.

With that in mind, it makes perfect sense for Jesus to act out the metaphorical meaning of rising to heaven through the physical act of ascension. Of course none of this makes sense to those unwilling to recognize the resurrection, but that’s another issue.

Harland Miller

2011-05-30T10:41:00.000-07:00

It’s Memorial Day once again, and once again I put flowers on Harland Miller’s grave and an American flag near his modest headstone. I’ve told Harland’s story before, but it bears repeating. He was a farm boy, largely self educated in the classics, who was seriously wounded in North Africa, spent several years in hospital recovery, and eventually returned home to live out his life as an impoverished, eccentric hermit. He had no living relatives when he died in 2004, save a distant cousin who had little to do with him. The church was his family. Iris bulbs, some fancy tea and a few pennies each week made up his tithe. We were the executor of his “estate.” We buried him. His tightly folded flag, given by a grateful nation, or so the card said, has its place of honor on the bookshelf in the rector’s office. A few of his iris bulbs flourish in a small garden on church property.

I thought about irises for his grave. They do him more honor and give God greater glory growing where they are. Normally it would be roses from our garden, but an unusually cool spring kept that from happening. He had to settle for azaleas this year. I don’t think Harland would go for the popular talk about remembering and honoring American heroes. He didn’t see that there was anything heroic about being blown up by a German shell. On the other hand, I do think he would be pleased to know that men and women such as he have been remembered and honored for doing their duty, for persevering in the face of fear, for doing what they had to do in a place they didn’t want to be.

I wonder if someone has put a flag near my dad’s plaque in the memorial garden where his ashes have become soil for flowers to grow? He wasn’t a hero either. He loved to tell how he had served as a private in the Army and officer in the Navy at the same time. It seemed farfetched, but always entertaining. After he died we found his discharge papers, one from each service.

St. Matthew was a repentant tax collector. This one isn't.

2011-05-27T17:09:00.000-07:00

Somehow I got on the mailing list for St. Matthew’s Churches of Tulsa. I tried to get off to no avail, but now find myself curious about what crackpot scheme will be sent to me next. No doubt many of you are familiar with it, but if not, it’s one of the scam operations that separates the gullible from their money on a promise that God wants financial prosperity for them, which will be theirs for a penny and a prayer. Well, actually, lots of pennies. An Internet search reveals quite a story behind their operation.

A mailing from them appears every few weeks, an envelope stuffed with tacky flyers promising a better life, health and, above all, financial success. Today’s was very special; it contained two blessed pennies (see above), one to be worn in each shoe for a few paces and then placed on the inside and outside of a front door in order to complete the promised blessing of Deuteronomy 28:6. Apparently Deuteronomy 28:6 is unrelated to the first portion of the chapter in which the promised blessings are contingent on obeying the voice of God, being careful to follow all the commandments. Of course the magic doesn’t fully work until you send the pennies back with a report on your blessings and a nice thank offering as well. No blessings? Try a larger thank offering. Maybe that will help.

I wonder what the hustlers running this thing will have to say for themselves on Judgment Day, which, as rumor has it, may come as soon as this October according to one of their competitors. I don’t think God will be amused. A solid atheist at least takes God seriously enough to argue about her existence with anyone. These people make God into a joke. I suspect that God has some degree of respect for the former, but the latter may be committing the unforgivable sin.

Camping Got Something Right, but only by accident

2011-05-26T03:00:00.000-07:00

Before we permanently assign Harold Camping to the theological kook bin, we might want to consider what made his prophecy so compelling to so many people, including, or maybe mostly, those who dismissed or ridiculed it.

Camping’s true believers are not of much interest to me. But I am interested in what made the media fall all over themselves to cover the story, and what inspired such interest in it from the religious establishment, annoyed atheists, and amused onlookers.

My guess is this. Camping touched a nerve that triggered a certain anxious fear that maybe there is some truth in all this last judgment stuff. However much one may boldly proclaim that God does not exist, Camping exposed the raw underside of nervous doubt about that. The jokes, ridicule and party planning sounded more than a little like so much whistling in the dark against the hobgoblins in which one claims not to believe. I suspect that on Saturday night a large number of people who have claimed to be spiritual but not religious seriously intended to go to church on Sunday morning. I wonder if they did?

What I think is demonstrated by all this is an underlying hunger for spiritual truth gnawing at the souls of all people, and especially those who have never heard the good news proclaimed in any helpful way. I’m not sure what to do about that except to say that I think it’s time that we quit moaning over the decline of main line Christianity and begin proclaiming that Good News with pride and confidence. I’d like to hear more about what you might think about it.

Federally Underwritten Rugged Individualism

2011-05-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

Eastern Washington has a reputation as politically conservative, a repository of hard core small government types who are thrilled at the prospect of slashing the federal government and its “creeping socialism.” Congressional Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers reigns with an attractive smile, bland platitudes about veterans and farmers, and floor votes as instructed by Cantor and Boehner.

What I find curious about this mythology of prideful, self reliant individualism is the amount of federal investment that created and sustains the way of life in the intermountain Pacific Northwest. The Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads opened the region to large scale commerce. Neither of them could have been built without enormous federal land grants, subsidies and armed protection. Paved highways and rural electrification were financed mostly by eastern taxpayers. The taming of the Columbia and Snake rivers with scores of locks and dams provided water to turn desert into cropland, barging for grain shipments to the coast, and an overabundance of relatively inexpensive hydropower. Recent half hearted thoughts about taking down some of the dams to improve fish habitat have been met with outrage, and signs posted on buildings declaring “SAVE OUR DAMS” along side posters for ultra conservative political candidates.

Farmers, proud of their rugged individualism, are suspended above the roughest market forces by crop insurance, set asides, subsidies, conversion of cropland to prairie grass, expert counsel from county agents, research funded through land grant universities, and dozens of other programs all financed through the federal government. Most of our grain crops are marketed overseas helped, in part, by aggressive trade negotiating at the federal level. It doesn’t keep farming from being a risky business, physically and emotionally demanding in every way. There is nothing easy about making one’s living on the farm or ranch. Yet the farm community is the strongest supporter of small government thinking. I don’t understand how one can be both dependent on the work of an active federal government and dismissive of it.

What else do we depend on? A big Air Force base near Spokane just happens to use many Boeing made products, each the result of a government contract. Boeing, of course, is on the other side of the mountains, the wet side, where all the liberals live, but we like the money, airplanes and software that come from over there, and we don’t complain about them paying most of the taxes. Speaking of planes, air transportation is important to us, so we fight hard for funding of rural air service subsidies. Our paved highways are wearing out. They need to be replaced.

You get the point. I would not call any of this hypocrisy because I don’t think it is intentional. On the contrary, the work of an active federal government has been so tightly woven into the fabric of daily life that I think it has become invisible. The very real need to manage our public spending in a more responsible way is well known and vigorously supported. What is not known, or remotely understood, is that some of the cost, the pain, will have to be borne by those who do not even know how dependent and indebted they have become on the largesse of federal spending.

Bluebirds

2011-05-24T20:48:00.000-07:00

Small delights can be gifts beyond measure. Our yard has long been a haven for sparrows, and we love them. More recently the gold finches have blessed us with their year long presence at the feeder. Several crows use the bird bath for a drink with dinner. That’s about it. We used to get quails but dogs and fences took care of that. Now and then a turkey struts through.

About two weeks ago we began to get morning and evening flights of western bluebirds flashing in for a bite at the feeder and quickly flashing away. Maybe western bluebirds are not special to you, but to us they are such amazing delights, sapphires on the wing. We sit at the kitchen table mesmerized by them. We have seen them before, rarely, but we have seen them, at a friend’s place up a nearby canyon. Never have we seen them in our area, or in our yard.

Birding is not our thing. We are content to be hoteliers to sparrows, restauranteurs to finches and bartenders to crows. The squirrels and birds have reached a mutually satisfactory accommodation of each other. Even the dogs have managed to fit in, in their own barkey way. It’s all rather normal. And then the bluebirds came. These beautiful jewels of the air decorating our surroundings for a moment. What a gift!

KInd of silly isn’t it? So much of my writing addresses the difficult issues of human life, and then a little blue bird flits by and makes it all seem so trivial.

Evidence Based Decisions? Not Likely!

2011-05-20T12:11:00.001-07:00

I wonder what it is that keeps us from using verifiable information at hand to guide our thinking and decisions. I also wonder what it is that keeps us from even seeking available information in preference to applying our assumptions and prejudices. For that matter, I wonder if the previous sentences and this one require a period or a question mark?

Our annual clergy conference is ended. It was centered on five sessions with Russ Crabtree of Holy Cow Consulting who demonstrated a variety of simple techniques to develop and analyze congregational profiles. Some of what we learned is best provided through professional help that small congregations cannot afford. Just the same, most of them can handle the basics on their own if they are willing. Will they? Probably not. We are far more inclined to forge ahead, or tread water, based on assumptions and prejudices rather than doing the hard work of looking for verifiable evidence. After all, it might force us to change our minds, and who would want to do that?

It might be tempting to accuse churches and church leaders of being especially susceptible, but I think it’s a broader human trait. A couple of years ago I was part of a committee that, with the help of a local university, put together a website offering summaries of hard data on the economic and social health of our valley. It’s kept up to date and out there in the public domain for anyone to use. Is it used by public opinion leaders and policy decision makers? Not as far as I can tell. Why is that?

I think we can blame part of it on the complexity of our world. We are overwhelmed by streams of information, some verifiable, some not, assaulting us on every side. Sorting it all out is impossible. It’s just easier to go with decisions based on values that are tightly held but seldom examined. Having said that, history suggests that people at all times and in all places have behaved the same way. It indicates to me that, even in so called simpler times, the exigencies of daily life appeared too overwhelming or complex to make it easy to make important decisions based on facts rather than assumptions.

I recall a study done many years ago by the Club of Rome, an organization not well known for its accuracy, that claimed the huge majority of the world’s population did not think in terms any other than of concrete decisions required for day to day living. It was not only true of people living at subsistence levels, but also of those living in the luxury and ease of economically advanced nations. Now and then I stumble across other studies that claim the same for some particular population. If they are true then making decisions based on verifiable evidence is not all that common. Maybe that is what marketing and advertising people have been counting on all along.

Can we change that? I have my doubts. However, one by one I believe we can begin to exercise more care in the decisions we make. Is it true? Can I verify it? On what moral foundations does it rest? Am I, in the words of the classic Steven Kerr essay, engaging in the “[f]olly of rewarding A while hoping for B.”

Medicating the Elderly

2011-05-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

It has been said that the elderly are too often over medicated and too easily get their meds mixed up. How does that happen? I’m beginning to learn - first hand. At 68 I hardly consider myself elderly, but, after a brief encounter with a wee little heart problem a few years ago, I find myself on a regimen of six medications, some taken once a day and some twice.

For convenience, I count them out and put them in one of those little plastic boxes with seven compartments, one for each day of the week. Now and then a pill ends up in the wrong compartment. The little buggers have a mind of their own it seems. I never forget to take the morning dose, but if the evening gets complicated by this or that, I sometimes overlook the nighttime pills. Moreover, my insurance requires that I get my meds from a mail order pharmacy that sends a three month supplies of each. To make sure I don’t run out, they renew the supply several weeks before the three months is up. The net result is a growing cache of meds.

It’s not a big problem. My primary care physician keeps everything coordinated and simple. My memory is just fine. I’m not on anything narcotic. An occasional missed dose is not fatal, and my growing supply of pills is more a storage problem than anything else. But it brings to mind the last few years of my mother’s life. A variety of doctors treating a variety of illnesses and conditions had tanked her up with an uncontrollable number of prescriptions. This slight, frail woman was on doses of narcotic pain meds that would have knocked out a large man. Her accumulation of three month supplies and old prescriptions added up to a huge number of pills lying around. It was not possible for her to keep all that straight, and I have no doubt that it contributed as much to her death as did the conditions they were intended to address.

I suspect that mom was not an isolated case, but common and symptomatic of a problem that needs to be addressed by the larger community. I’m not sure what that would involve, but a part of it has to be a way to teach elderly patients how to understand and manage their own medications. I believe that physicians and pharmacies are too ready to patronize the elderly as incompetent consumers, and too many elderly find it very easy, even convenient, to let that happen. Old does not mean stupid or incompetent, nor does it mean that one cannot learn new habits and be held accountable for them.

The Meaning of Family

2011-05-10T15:29:00.000-07:00

Starting in my childhood, at that unknown age when I began to pay attention to sermons, and continuing through the majority of my adulthood, the passage in Acts about how the early Jerusalem community of believers held all things in common and spent a great deal of time together in worship and the breaking of bread, was held up as one of two things. First, it was proof that the early Christians modeled the ideal of socialism that we must regain. Second, it was proof that socialism is inherently unstable, easily disintegrating under the burden of its own weaknesses. I cannot remember a sermon or bible class that did not begin with one view or the other.

I think they both miss the point by a huge distance. The story in Acts has nothing to do with socialism or anything like it. It has everything to do with redefining family. Families in Jesus’ day, as with traditional families of the region yet today, held all things in common, joining three generations or more in one household, often including various uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. The abiding symbol of family was the sharing of bread, the family meal. The story in Acts, building on the episode recorded in Mark 3, Matthew 12 and Luke 8, illustrates Jesus’ own meaning of family as the gathering of his followers living in communion with one another.

It wasn’t perfect. It was beset by betrayal. Israelites and Hellenists didn’t get along with each other. Theological differences arose between leaders who experienced Jesus through different lenses. Nevertheless, the breaking of bread, the sharing of the family meal, in Christ’s name, in Christ’s presence, remained the center of life and the core definition of family. It was communion, Holy Communion.

The ritualized nature of our own Holy Eucharist retained the power of its symbolism as long as the ideal of the family meal was embraced by society, but I think it’s more difficult in America today where so many rarely sit down to a family meal, and there is little sense of it as an ideal. I’m reminded of my own childhood. Every Sunday we sat down to a Sunday supper of a roast, potatoes, vegetable, small salad and bread. There were two iron clad rules. Grace would be said, and bread would be broken. There were only the five of us: mom, dad, my two younger sisters and me. My parents had moved as far away from rural Kansas as they could get, leaving the extended family behind. But the grace we said was the same grace they said. The menu we ate was the same menu they ate. The ritual of breaking bread was the same ritual they observed. Most often, the meal would be followed by a hurried, loudly voiced long distance phone call to Kansas. In that context it was not hard to understand the parish as family, and the Eucharist as the shared meal that bound us together, no matter what our differences were or what the preacher said about socialism.

My guess is that that sort of family ritual is uncommon today, which makes it all the harder to understand the symbolism of Acts 2 as an illustration of Christ’s call to a new understanding of family. A few years ago, some popular church consultant, I don’t remember who, even railed against the language of congregation as family. It was, he said, just the sort of language that too easily excluded strangers and seekers. OK, that’s a danger, but it seems to me one that we can live with if we are to be serious about following where Jesus has led: “ Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you.” But he said to them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”” (Luke 8:19-21)

In that family no one is without brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles. How precious the gift of family so gathered in Christ's name.

Deserving and Desiring

2011-05-06T16:16:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking about the question of deserving for some time now, but it came to a head with the pundits falling all over each other asserting that Americans deserve to know the details of the raid on Osama bin Laden, that they deserve to see the photos of his body. That’s only the latest take on what Americans deserve. It comes up as everything from deserving to pay lower taxes to deserving to own a flat screen TV. Not long ago a young newly minted real estate agent complained that he worked so hard for his license, he deserved to make some sales. Apparently there is nothing we cannot or do not deserve. We deserve slim bodies, great sex, more money, better education, healthier lives, and exotic trips. Corporate mouthpieces can be heard muttering about how business deserves tax breaks, tax funded investment incentives, nonunion shops, lower pay for workers, and reduced pension costs.

What a world we live in with so much deserving. At funerals we hear the bereaved explain how their late beloved deserves heaven even though he/she neither believed in nor observed any known religion. Apparently deserving flows into eternity with ease.

Deserve is a word commonly used by almost every one about almost everything, but on what can the assertion of deserving be based? What does it mean to deserve something? Apart from its dictionary definition, it seems to fall into two categories. One has to do with the idea of contract. I agree to do something for you in exchange for some kind of payment. If I perform as promised then I deserve my payment; I’ve earned it. The Enlightenment expanded the concept of personal contracts and gave us the idea of social contracts. Government is said to be a contract between the people and the government in which each side deserves to be well served by the terms and conditions of that contract. Moreover, the theory holds that the social contract is derived from the people, not from the government. We deserve our civil rights only because they are the part of the social contract that is recognized, granted and guaranteed by law. From time to time various societies will rewrite a portion of the social contract to recognize new civil rights, but those rights do not exist outside of the law that recognizes them.

There are rights that all people deserve, and that exist whether a law recognizes them or not. The other category of what it means to deserve falls under the idea of human rights. Human rights are a fungible commodity. The definition of them is always changing, and again, in their modern form they spring from the Enlightenment. Our Declaration of Independence used Enlightenment thinking to declare that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These human rights are not defined by contract but are what persons deserve simply because they are persons. What those human rights are have been debated and the list expanded century by century. It’s always changing, and it differs widely from culture to culture. The result is that anyone can claim anything on behalf of an individual, group of people or an entire nation as being something they deserve because it is their human right.

In an odd twist, I think we Americans have added a verb to the definition. We have rights that are ours not simply because we are human, or even American humans, but because we are human consumers.

It is exactly at this point that critical thinking needs to step in. The question must be, do we mean deserve in any classical way, or do we mean desire? My niece, for instance, recently got her drivers license and has been heard to say that she deserves a car. What she really meant was that she desires a car, and there is a huge difference between desiring something and deserving it. Therein lies the heart of the issue. It is not only that we Americans often say that we deserve something when we mean that we desire it, I think we really believe that desiring leads to deserving. What we desire to consume we deserve to consume as a human right.

As for the news pundits, when they assert that the American public deserves to see the photos or know the details, what they really mean is that they desire to see and know those things and are projecting their desires onto a vaguely defined public under the guise that a public of news consumers deserves to consume whatever they desire to consume.

Desiring and deserving. Two ‘D’ words with enormous differences in meaning, yet sometimes they can merge. What do you think about that? What do you desire as opposed to what you deserve? Where do deserving and desiring come together for you? What has led to the uncritical conflation of deserving and desiring? I demand an answer. I deserve to know!

Rational Cosumers

2011-05-04T09:54:00.001-07:00

Paul Ryan’s budget has been on my mind mostly because I keep hearing supporters and pundits claiming that privatizing Medicare will unleash the forces of competition thus driving down premiums. Apart from the fact that we have seen no evidence of that happening in the existing private medical insurance markets, the argument’s basic assumption is that consumers will make rational buying decisions. That simply is not true.

Our mailbox was stuffed with ads, flyers and detailed monographs touting Medicare Advantage and supplemental insurance plans a few years ago as I approached the magic age. I consider myself a reasonably sophisticated buyer. I am able to read most financial reports. I understand the basics of economic theory. But the materials in our mailbox were almost impossible to fully comprehend or compare. Extravagant promises made in cover letters were shredded by dozens of limitations and exceptions in the small print. Terms and conditions varied between companies not only by what they said but also by the words used to say them so that comparisons were difficult to make. I did work up a few spread sheets to do what I could to compare a few plans, but in the end I simply trusted the Church Pension Fund to be more interested in my welfare than any of the other sources. That was my rational decision.

More likely than not, the vast majority of buyers would simply throw up their hands and be persuaded by whatever piece of advertising appealed most to them, or, if they were lucky, by an insurance agent who proved to be trustworthy. Economic rationality based on analysis and understanding would have little to do with it.

The Ryan proposal does more than transfer costs from the collective purchasing power of all retired persons represented by the existing Medicare program to the individual purchasing power of irrational buyers. Whether intentionally or not, it sets up the conditions under which funds that would otherwise be dedicated to health care will be dedicated to marketing and bureaucratic overhead (including those wonderful top end salaries). In other words, it’s a rip-off.

All of this reminds me of the 1970s when the idea of consumer rationality was touted by a number of economists. Coming out of one presentation I thought how good it felt to hear someone give a little credit to consumers about their ability to make rational choices. I was not a pawn in a corporate game of chess. I was a decision maker to whom sellers had to cater because my decisions were what kept them in business. There is some truth to that in the local market place of small retailers and service providers. In the larger world of major corporations it is not true. It took me several years to recognize that the whole theory of rationality, as presented, was little more than a gigantic con in which the marks were softened up with flattery to give buyers the illusion of making sound purchasing decisions that were, in reality, heavily influenced by skillful marketing.

Repent and be Baptized. You have been Ransomed!

2011-05-03T20:27:00.000-07:00

This Sunday some of us will hear a portion of Peter’s first sermon from Acts calling on his listeners to repent and be baptized, followed by a portion from 1^st Peter saying that Christians have been ransomed with the precious blood of Christ.

Repent, be baptized, you have been ransomed by the blood of Christ. That’s the call, but I think it falls short. There is a ‘so that’ attached to it. “[S]o that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.” It is this heartfelt, deep, mutual love for one another that must be the intention of our repentance and the sign of our Christian fellowship that is displayed to the entire world.

My experience is that the Church, writ however large or small you want, pays little more than lip service to the commandment to love and the importance of displaying that love as a sign to the world. Most of us are not unaware of that even if we don't want to admit it. It’s why contemporary figures such as Tutu, Teresa, Nouwen, Merton and others are revered as the ones to whom we can point while generally rejecting their example as having any practical application in our own daily lives. Few of us are called to become a Tutu, Teresa, Nouwen or Merton. We are neither monk, nun nor bishop, we don’t want to become one, and we wouldn’t be good at it if we were. Nevertheless, every Christian is called to a life of discipleship, not at the margins but at the core.

Since formation for discipleship is among the highest priorities across all denominations, I suggest that deep mutual love for one another must be an essential ingredient of it. Without it there is no true repentance, baptism loses its meaning, and the ransoming blood of Christ is trivialized. The problem, at least for me, is that deep mutual love for one another is an abstraction without clear definition. It sounds great - just exactly what a good Christian should exhibit. But how does that get worked out in real life? The kind of life most people actually live?

There’s the rub. Learning to follow Christ through love is the hardest thing any of us will ever attempt. Yet I believe that it is only through one’s own personal commitment to the discipline of Christlike love that we can truly claim formation as believers. It would please me to make that claim for myself, but I can’t. I’ve been working on it a long time with only marginal success. I can forcefully assert that I know what needs to be done, but I am not the one others should aspire to emulate. What bothers me is that too many leaders appear to ignore the love commandment altogether, or dare to claim that their narrow minded, bigoted teaching is a fulfillment of it.

Scripture offers many places to begin. One of them is the 12^th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness. Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Daniel: Can you keep a Secret?

2011-04-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

“But you, Daniel, keep the words secret and the book sealed until the time of the end...[g]o your way, Daniel, for the words are to remain secret and sealed until the time of the end.”

The community is inundated about once a year with newspaper ads, television spots, mass mailings and door hangers promoting the ONE DAY ONLY appearance of some world famous expert on prophecy who will unlock the secrets and unveil the meaning for us in our day in order that we might be prepared for That Day, which is upon us. The book of Daniel will be a prominent feature of the talk.

It is blatant carnival hucksterism, but it works. The room will be packed and the people mesmerized. The out of town preacher will stitch together a very believable and apparently logical story. He will do it with energy, flourishes, a backup band, terrific terrifying slides, and an altar call.

Some local clergy will seize on the momentary outflowing of emotional turmoil over the imminence of the Last Judgment to beef up worship service attendance as well as, perhaps, tithing. Others will be confronted by a few parishioners wanting to know if maybe this guy really does know what he’s talking about, and why have they never heard that sort of truth telling from their own pulpit.

In a few weeks he will have been all but forgotten but for a core of true believers who will already be working on next year’s performance. It’s not a bad thing. Among those who pay any attention at all will be some who want to know more about God and Jesus, about faith and atonement, and about what this Last Day stuff is all about. They may not go to the nearest church to seek out the clergy, but they will ask their questions at coffee, over a beer or in a conversation with friends. Will they encounter well formed and well informed “ministers” among the baptized when they ask those questions? I hope so.

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. (BCP)

Is Life Planned by a Heavenly TripTik?

2011-04-26T11:59:00.000-07:00

A portion of Isaiah’s 30^th chapter reads, “...your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’”

I once dealt with a young man who was so convinced of a particular meaning of the literal truth in these words that he would wait for holy inspiration to tell him which way to walk to work. Oddly enough, he went on to a successful career in a field rife with ethical ambiguity. More common is the assertion that God is in control of everything that happens, and that God’s plan for one’s personal life is something like a heavenly AAA TripTik complete with turn-by-turn directions to a final destination, including all the stops along the way. For those of you unfamiliar with the ancient technology of an AAA TripTik, it’s something like a paper version of a talking GPS guiding you from point A to point B with many stops in between. The main difference is that the Triptik also describes all the details of points of interest along the way.

That view of what it means to say that God has a plan for your life, it seems to me, misses the whole point of everything God had to say through the prophets. The holy voice that says, “This is the way; walk in it,” is not talking about sidewalks or roadways. It is talking about the moral choices one makes in one’s life. God’s plan, both personal and corporate, is all about what it means to live together ethically. The prophets, illuminated by Christ’s teaching, provide challenging standards for what that means.

One of the temptations we embrace is how much easier t is to ignore God's moral imperatives while pestering God for detailed instructions on important life decisions as well as on the minutia of daily life. It’s so much easier to assert that God is in control of everything while we go about the business of screwing things up with our ego driven selfishness. It’s a win-win for us. We can avoid taking responsibility for ourselves and our communities while boldly asserting that whatever crackpot idea we’ve come up with is a part of God’s plan. We can confidently rest in the blessed assurance that we have accepted Jesus Christ as our personal savior while ignoring most of what he, and all of scripture, have to say about the ethics of life together. Moreover, we can arrogantly assert that our culturally formed way of life is from God himself, and, therefore, is the way of life everybody else should adopt.

It must drive God crazy to have to put up with us. Frankly, I’m amazed that God can love us so much that he would send his only begotten Son. That his plan for salvation somehow includes the whole of creation is what gives me hope. It certainly won’t come from our end.

A Brief Reflection on the Passing of Lent

2011-04-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

I am one of those who look forward to Lent as a season for quiet reflection and a slower pace of life. It always comes as a surprise how quickly it passes, how soon it’s over, how little time I devoted to quiet reflection, and how unchanged my pace of life remained during those few brief weeks.

Maybe that’s why I treasure Holy Week and the Great Vigil of Easter so much. It captures the essence of Lent in seven short days. It is not simply a matter of attending a quiet Eucharist each day, or the very intentional remembrance of the gift of holy food and drink on Thursday, or the vigil at the cross on Friday. I also do my best to drop out of normal obligations and civic duties during Holy Week. The United Way, Housing Authority and Diocese all get along without me. On Saturday evening, at the Great Vigil, the darkened church offers few distractions. The long series of lessons are given opportunity for reflection by the offering of canticles and hymns between them. Almost too soon comes the announcement that He is Risen and Easter has arrived.

I rejoice at the return of Alleluias, which, rather stubbornly, I will not give up after Pentecost as is the practice of some. I rejoice at the renewal of life and hope that never died and never will. I rejoice at the good news we are called to share. But a part of me misses the Lent in which I did not fully participate. And I give grateful thanks for the Holy Week that prepared me for Easter’s joy.

Preserving State Wealth by Preserving the Wealthy? I've got a better idea.

2011-04-22T18:20:00.000-07:00

My wife says that I get really morose on Good Fridays, and that probably explains this post. Why else would I be writing about state finances instead of atonement?

I’ve been involved in an interesting exchange of e-mails with my state senator, a Republican who used to be centrist but has tilted farther to the right in recent years. The issue pivots on how to restructure the state’s budget to be more fiscally responsible. It’s pretty much the same set of problems facing most states these days. The State of Washington has a long history of significant operating fund deficits as measured by tax revenue against expenditures. They have been financed, and the budget balanced, by a combination of federal monies and fund transfers. With federal money on the decline, something has to be done to bring expenditures closer to locally raised revenues. The last time they met was in 1997, and I haven’t checked to see if that was just a one time event.

Washington does not have an income tax, so state revenues are dependent on sales taxes, a gross receipts tax on businesses, and various fees. The state portion of the sales tax is 6.5%. The gross receipts tax rate is around .005% except for services at about .02%. No doubt someone will correct me if I'm wrong about these rates. Anyway, buried in the tax code are a number of credits and exemptions enacted over the years to benefit particular industries and companies.

Washington also allows for initiatives and referenda, and an ultraconservative, small government character named Tim Eyman has mastered the art of authoring initiatives that not only cut taxes and fees, they also shackle the ability of local and state legislators to raise taxes except by super majority votes or public referenda. His initiatives were an easy sell for several years. As one of my friends once said; “Lower taxes? Who wouldn’t vote for that? It’s a no brainer.” He has less success these days, now that some of the effects have begun to show themselves in declining levels of service and maintenance.

Obviously it’s a tough issue that cannot be resolved without pain. My argument has been that, unless the legislature is willing to look at both revenue and costs, the outcome is likely to lead the state down a hill that first hurts those who are least able to defend themselves, and then heads toward a lower standard of living for all. My senator’s argument has been that our tax system is just fine, we raise enough money, and the various credits and exemptions are all job creating incentives that are working the way they are supposed to, so our entire focus must be on reducing expenditures. I don’t know enough about the credits and exemptions to judge with certainty, but my guess is that’s a lot of baloney. He’s also begun to spout the Wisconsin line that greedy, uncooperative public employees are the cause of our problems. I guess he figures that will appeal to the right wingers, and he’s right, but, I think, morally wrong.

There’s a line going around on Facebook that nails it well. It reads: Remember when teachers, public employees, planned parenthood, and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes? Yeah, me neither.

Of course we need to rein in spending and use our available resources in a more efficient and intentional way. It’s not that the state has wasteful programs. To the contrary, it’s hard to find anything that is not contributing to essential needs. But the legislature enacted too many good ideas with no clear idea of how they would be paid for over the long term, and with too much faith in a booming economy and federal revenue sharing.

We also need to take a hard look at revenues. I am among the few in Washington who favor an income tax as a far more equitable way to raise public funds. It seems unlikely that will happen anytime soon. But we could make an audit of the various exemptions granted to businesses with an eye toward making the wealthiest and most powerful interests participate with the poorest and least powerful interests in the restructuring of the state’s finances. We could, but we won’t. The legislators don’t have the courage to do it.

What it all comes down to is that we are banking on the return of booming economy driven by Boeing, Microsoft and high wheat prices to raise revenues. It’s worked before and it might work again. In the meantime, small government right wingers are rejoicing in their opportunity to return the quality of life in the state to where it belongs, the late 19^th century before radicals like Teddy Roosevelt started messing things up.

I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we take all the sales tax revenue and bet it at the roulette tables in the Indian casinos! Better yet, we could go down to Oregon and invest it all in Power Ball tickets!

Easter at Grace

2011-04-21T09:53:00.000-07:00

I failed to line up a musician for Easter Sunday at little Grace Church in Dayton, WA. Our singing is normally led by a member of the congregation who noodles out an approximation of the tune on the organ, but she’s on vacation. Easter has often been adorned by music majors from one of the colleges in Walla Walla, but my contacts there have dwindled to nothing. Nevertheless, we will rejoice in our celebration of the Resurrection.

We, borrowing a suggestion from the Methodists, will lustily sing a cappella in our usual multipart, multi keyed harmony. The church will be overflowing with flowers brought in by the arm load by a ninety year old member who will have “borrowed” them from her neighbors’ yards. Amid the solemnity of an Episcopalian Eucharist, we will shout out our Alleluias, and not take ourselves so seriously that it prevents us from breaking out in spontaneous laughter at almost anything. The blessing and dismissal will have been offered, but the Eucharist, the celebration, will continue, possibly in the church, but more likely down at the Country Cupboard bakery, as is usual on Sundays.

If you have ever wondered whether Grace is a real place, look it up on the web. It’s not fancy but they do have their own website: www.gracechurchdaytonwa.org.

He is Risen? Who Cares!

2011-04-19T16:48:00.001-07:00

Interesting conversation in our Tuesday morning lectionary group. It began with the usual quandary about how best to preach to those who come only once or twice a year. One of our group enthused about how when they hear that Jesus rose from the dead it will, or at least can, change their lives forever. He’s seen it happen.

I doubt it. Once upon a time, when I was a child in the 1950s, it could be assumed that most Americans were nominally Christian in the sense that they had been exposed to the basic words and images associated with Christianity that were a part of everyday life. It was also assumed that the large numbers of Sunday school graduates who failed to show up for church the Sunday after Confirmation would return again in a few years with their own children. That did not happen, at least not in huge numbers. In any case, the Easter sermon could assume a shared base of knowledge upon which a greater understanding could be built.

I suppose I could do a little research and tease out the numbers. I’ll leave that up to you if you’re interested. What you will probably find is that we have a couple of generations who know little of Christianity, other than the dribbles they get from the media, because they have never been part of a church community. Others may know slightly more but were so put off by childhood experiences that it all seemed pointless. Some of them will come to church on Easter, as they might on Christmas, not to touch something familiar from their youth, but as a kindness to a well meaning relative insisting on their presence, or, perhaps, as an interesting adventure not unlike attending an obscure off Broadway show just for the fun of it.

In other words, we cannot assume anything about what they know or don’t know about Christ. We can assume that they are well informed about Harry Potter. The astounding announcement that He is Risen! is just as likely to have no meaning whatsoever. Their lives seem to go on just fine without whatever it is that Christians say is essential to life. A couple of hours in church to satisfy grandma or enjoy the music is not a lot to ask or give, so why not, at least this year.

If we are going to be serious about bearing the Good News of God in Christ. then, I think, we need to put ourselves into the shoes of Peter, Paul and others who took it into unfamiliar territory. Like Paul, we are addressing a bunch of Athenians who have hundreds of gods, none of which they take seriously, but of whom we are certain they are seeking something that can only be answered by Christ. Who is Christ? That may be one question in need of answer. More important is, Why should they care? What possible difference can it make? And there had better be a better answer than if you don’t believe you’ll burn in hell.

Crafting a sermon to meet conditions such as these is difficult. If there is a really good one around, I haven’t heard it. Fortunately for me, I don’t have to do it. The little, rural congregation I will lead on Sunday may have as many as 25 in the pews, an amazing 78% increase over normal attendance (eat your heart out mega-church), but most will be life long Christians. We will celebrate the Resurrection with all the vigor we can muster. Our greater problem is how to equip these saints to go out into the community to address the Easter and Christmas crowd over the next 363 days. We Episcopalians seem to have a problem with that other E word.

Religion as Faith and Faith as Completion

2011-04-17T18:05:00.000-07:00

Carl Jung reported on many dreams told to him by his patients. In one of them the dreamer is told that, “religion is no substitute; it is to be added to the other activities of the soul as the ultimate completion.” Leaving Jung’s own analysis aside, it seems to me to be an important point. Religion, in this case, is not limited to the creed, rituals and polity of one’s tradition, but extends to the broader matter of the faith that is represented by them.

There are some professed Christians for whom religion is not only a substitute, but an essential replacement for all other activities of the soul, however the soul is understood. There is an old joke in which a Sunday school teacher asks a complicated question. A child raises her hand and says she does’t understand the question but the answer must be Jesus. For many, Jesus, and, more particularly, the correct formula for Jesus, is the answer to every question. The world itself, in their understanding of it, is ruled by a God who is in control of every event. Almost any reasonably good idea is justified with words such as, “The Lord has laid it on me to...,” or “It has been given to me to...” I recall counseling years ago with an extreme case in which I finally demanded of the person, “Don’t you ever have any ideas of your own? Is there nothing for which you are personally responsible?” Maybe I was a tad more diplomatic at the time.

Although that is often presented as a sign of a deep and trusting faith in God, I’m more inclined to think it is a sign of a insecurity about, and lack of trust in, one’s own God given abilities to have thoughts and make decisions. It can be a refusal to take ownership of, and responsibility for, one’s own self. If we are to take Jesus seriously, then we must take seriously his earthly ministry of healing that restored people to wholeness of body, mind, spirit and place. That wholeness included faith in God through Jesus as essential to the completion of the self. He did not always say that faith is what made one well, but it was always implied that faith was an essential component of wellness. Spiritual wellness is one modern way to put it, and that can sound like a tepid faith so watered down that it has no meaning. But Jesus never demanded a formulaic affirmation faith, and he was known to heal persons who had not asked for it, persons of no known religion, and persons who had been rejected by the religions of their community. However faith was understood, it was not a substitute for everything else that contributes to a healthy self. It was added to the other activities of the soul as the ultimate completion. Persons healed by Jesus were sent on their way as responsible adults.

The opposite side of the issue illuminates a similar problem among self proclaimed atheists. They also see religion as a substitute for every other activity of the soul and, therefore, reject it. For whatever reason, they apparently cannot envision religion, as faith in God, as an essential component of human wholeness. If some professed Christians are afraid to put any distance between themselves and God, these religious skeptics are afraid to enter into any intimacy with God. One is afraid of their own God given independent agency. The other is afraid that God might control everything they want to claim as their own. They are both suffering under illusions that feed each others' fears.

Unbinding the Dead for a New Life

2011-04-16T11:37:00.000-07:00

I’ve been working as a consultant to a congregation that has faced a combination of issues: structural problems with the building, a declining average Sunday attendance, clergy burnout and turnover, and the need to restructure debt.

A few days ago we had meeting with the leadership to establish a new direction that involves the restructuring of the congregation as the cost of restructuring their debt and completing needed repairs. With it came the “planting” of a new mission for a new congregation. On the one hand it was an encouraging moment. There is a future, a very hopeful future for this church, in this place, at this time. The current members of the congregation will be the seedbed for what is yet to come. The majority of current leadership looked forward to a new future and expressed enthusiasm for the hard work ahead.

On the other hand, it was a sad moment. Several of the old time leaders, the ones who have always been able to call the shots no matter who the elected leadership were, finally realized that their time was over. Control had been taken away from them. As we talked at length about a new mission in a revitalized congregation, one of them said, quite honestly, “I don’t want a new church, I want the old church.” His heart was broken.

However much he, and some others, want the old church to come back, it is gone for good. What will be remains to be seen. Whatever it is to become, it will include persons participating in and leading worship for whom Christianity, church and our denomination are likely to be a new experience. Like the new Christians of Corinth and Ephesus, Phillipi and Thessalonica, they will come from other traditions or no tradition at all. They will learn by practice and teaching what it means to be Christians within our tradition, but in new ways that will be unfamiliar, even off putting, to more than a few of the old timers.

A building that had become a sanctuary from the outside world will become a place of worship that leads to, and cannot be separated from, engagement with the surrounding community, not as a social service agency, but at the body of Christ continuing his ministry of healing and reconciliation in the community.

My role, my time, with this congregation is coming to an end. What began as an assignment to help them with a building problem became something else altogether. Now they will be served by others well trained in congregational development, but they will remain close to my heart and in my prayers. I will pray for courage, strength and patience for their new leadership, and I will pray for consolation for the former leaders who are just now grieving a death that happened a decade ago but went unrecognized.

There are, I think, parallels with the raising of Lazarus. Beloved of Jesus, yet dead just the same, his corps had become a decomposing stench. But what looks dead to us is not dead to God. Although Jesus called him from the grave, it took human effort to roll away the stone and unbind him so that he could freely enter into a new life, his by the grace of God. The resurrection of this congregation will be like that. Although Christ will call them forth, it will take human effort to roll away the stones that have sealed them in a tomb of their own making. It will take human effort to unbind them from practices and attitudes that have kept them from freely following Christ into the world. Christ has called. The stones have been removed. We shall see how the unbinding goes.

Are We Going in the Wrong Direction?

2011-04-12T15:21:00.000-07:00

What percentage of the people believe the country is headed in the wrong direction? What percentage of your denomination believe the church is headed in the wrong direction? How did we get on the wrong track? Sound familiar? I have encountered countless friends and bare acquaintances who, with moistened eyes, trembling lips or glaring anger have made these bold assertions. Maybe you have also.

I have some questions of my own. What direction is the wrong direction? What would be the right direction? What track are we on, and where does it lead? No one ever seems to know. Lately I’ve been asking the direct question; exactly what is the direction we are headed, where will it take us and why is it wrong? The general response is a blank stare, a few mumbled er, ums, and a change of subject.

I have no doubt that those with a quick “wrong direction” answer really are feeling some social or political unease, even anxiety. But that doesn’t say much. My guess is that there are a couple of things going on here. One is the ease with which generic wrong direction assertions can be used to cover up socially unacceptable prejudice and bigotry. Another is that there are many who cannot articulate what they mean because they are too lazy to think it through. Others may simply be too ignorant. It’s a tempting answer because it’s a simple answer.

Are we on the right track? Which track? The nation, the church, our families, even our selves are all on many tracks going in many directions. The right direction? We are going in many directions with many intended destinations, and experience suggests that most likely we will end up somewhere else.

When asked if I think the nation is going in the right or wrong direction, my answer is that I haven’t a clue, but I do have some anxiety about America’s future. Pushed too hard to the right and we could end up a picturesque economic backwater with large population of marginally educated poor people dominated and ruled by a small population of the wealthy.

When asked if I think the Church is going in the right or wrong direction, my answer is a confident both, and at the same time. About the Church I have no deep anxiety. It is, after all, God’s Church and I think she can handle it.

Coffee Hour Questions: Where does anti-Semitism come from? A mostly true answer, give or take a few exceptions. It is coffee hour after all.

2011-04-10T18:17:00.000-07:00

You asked about why there has been so much antisemitism in the world and even in the U.S.

A very good question. So here goes.

First a word of clarification. When you asked about antisemitism I believe you were really asking about anti Jewish prejudice. Semites, technically speaking, are all people who share in a common language root, the semitic languages of the Middle East, notably Hebrew and Arabic plus a bunch of ancient languages no longer spoken. But let’s go on and talk about anti Jewish prejudice.

Relations between Jews and Gentiles were tough from before the time of Jesus. The main reason was their insistence on worshiping an invisible God while denying that any of the other gods were even gods at all. Moreover, Rome had a law that all people under its rule could go on worshiping their own gods in their own ways, but they had to worship Roman gods also, at least in a superficial way and on major holidays. Herod the Great was a friend of Caesar and managed to lobby through an exemption for Jews. That did not sit well with other occupied nations who were denied such a deal.

Then along came the Christians, who were seen as some sort of weird Jewish sect, but one that actively tried to convert good, honest pagans, which regular Jews would never do. Things were getting out of control. At about the same time the Jews of Palestine began a series of wars against Rome. It did not go well for them, and in 70 A.D. the Romans had had enough. They destroyed the temple right down to its foundation and burned Jerusalem to the ground. Just to put that in perspective, it was about five years after Peter and Paul were executed in Rome which is about where the New Testament story ends. Anyway, with the temple gone along with all the priests and Sadducees, the only Jewish religious leaders left were the Pharisees. They got together to decide about the best way to go on being Jewish without a temple and all of its rituals. What they came up with eventually matured into modern day Rabbinic Judaism. At the same time they decided on a final break with the Christians since most of them were gentiles and not proper Jews. They didn’t want them worshiping in the synagogues along with real Jews anymore. Over time they prepared a prayer to be recited at each worship service that included a request that God punish all slanderers, and the wording of it was such that any Christian would recognize it as against them. That pretty much ended the Jewish-Christian link.

Remember that I said that the New Testament story ends about the time when Peter and Paul were executed around the year 65 A.D.? Most of the writing of the New Testament, except for Paul’s letters, came after that. John’s gospel, the last of them, was written well after 70 A.D. The split with Judaism had already occurred when John wrote, and you can see it in the words he used. John was a Christian Jew who was ticked off about it.

Now we need to leap forward a couple of hundred years to the early 300s when the emperor Constantine legalized Christianity. Not long after, it became the official religion of the empire. Once again the Jews stubbornly refused to do what Rome demanded. They would not become Christians. That was more or less tolerated until the Roman empire fell apart, the Middle Ages had begun, and poverty, disease, wars and superstition ran rampant all over Europe. Even the Church was increasingly corrupt, and many priests were almost as illiterate as their parishioners. Whose fault? Had to be somebody’s fault! The Jews, those Christ killers, it must be their fault! Look at them! They dress funny! They talk funny! They refuse to worship Jesus, and they do strange secretive things in their services. I’ll bet it’s devil worship! And John’s gospel had a lot to do with that idea.

Jews were prohibited from living where they wanted. They were rounded up and forced to into ghettos. They were prohibited from most ordinary occupations, but, since lending money at interest was prohibited to Christians, and Jewish practice allowed them to lend money at interest to gentiles but not to other Jews, banking became one way to earn a living. That led to making money in other kinds of trade. Since most Jews were literate in at least two languages, it opened up work in medicine, chemistry and other related fields. Tailoring and sewing were also possibilities. Being educated didn’t help. Educated people are often the object of contempt by the ignorant.

During the crusades Jews were randomly slaughtered by Christian crusaders who, on their way to liberate the Holy Land from Muslims, got rid of a few Christ killers along the way. England banned all Jews from living in the realm. Spain and Portugal demanded that they convert or be tortured and executed. Sometimes they got the order mixed up and started with torture before going on to conversion. Jews moved from place to place trying to find a reasonably safe place to live. Poland and Russia seemed like a good bet because there they could also be farmers, and farming was in their blood. That didn’t last long (watch Fiddler on the Roof).

So where did antisemitism come from? From superstition, the need humans have for a scapegoat enemy, the Gospel according to John, ignorant Christian teaching, and the deliberate marginalization of a people forced into roles that could then be demonized. That’s where it came from.

It is shameful. There is no way around that and no excuse to be offered. At the same time, it is important to recognize that any people, nationality, ethnic group or religion can fall into the same trap. We confess that we are a fallen race, and that shows its ugly head anywhere you go. It can be seen in the way Islamic fundamentalists hate things Western. It can also be seen in the caste system of India, the way the Han Chinese marginalize and oppress non-Han Chinese, and, in our own country, how the dominant white population has treated blacks, Indians and other minorities.

What can we, as Christians, do about it? We can love the Lord our God with all our heart. We can love our neighbors as ourselves, remembering especially the significance of the parable of the Good Samaritan. We can love others as Christ loved us. It’s that simple, and it’s the hardest thing we will ever learn to do.

Frozen to Death? Maybe Not!

2011-04-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

Seasons linger in our valley. The cool but gentle weather of fall can last past Christmas. Winters tend to be gray and foggy but with mild temperatures. Spring begins to show itself by late February. Just the same, we had a day or two of very deep freeze last fall. Plants had not yet entered their winter dormancy. Sap still flowing through them froze solid. It was enough to kill some of them. Roses and laurels were especially hard hit. All over town they are being dug up and tossed onto rubbish piles.

Our friend Don, a landscape designer, came over to look at ours a couple of weeks ago, and they looked bad. “These three are dead,” he said, “and they have to go.” “But look here at all the rest; see down at the base where green shoots are barely visible; they will survive. Cut them way back, gently care for them, and they will be OK.”

I wonder how often we see all the signs of spiritual death in those around us? Fellow humans whose hearts have been frozen solid by the coldness of life, often a coldness experienced in church, an arctic wind that chills the soul blowing out of the mouths of pastors and teachers. How often do we figuratively dig them up and toss them on rubbish piles destined for Gehenna, or maybe the Kidron Valley? How many pastors and church leaders there are who say they are looking for signs of spiritual renewal, but all they can see is spiritual death. It’s all around them, and it’s all they ever talk about.

Why do we find it so difficult to look closer and see the barely visible green shoots of nascent faith emerging from roots that have endured the cold and refused to die? They are small, tender and vulnerable, but they are there. Digging around my dead hydrangeas, Don pointed to the all but invisible signs of new life. “Prune these dead branches all the way down to the ground. These new shoots will take their place. They won’t bloom this year, but next year they will.”

In a couple of weeks we will celebrate the drama of the Resurrection. We ought not to forget that this same Jesus Christ never failed to see, nurture and strengthen even the barest signs of spiritual life in those he met. To him, and in his presence, no one was ever dead. “I am life,” he said. As bearers of his continued presence, however imperfectly we bear it, no one should should ever be judged dead by us. We are not agents of death. We are agents of life who must be especially attentive to the barely visible and fragile signs of new life trying to grow where death had claimed its false victory. Maybe some really are dead. That’s not our call to make. We do not have the competency to do it.