bear witness to the love of God: blog, reflect, respond

a vacation from technology?

2009-07-07T07:18:00.001-07:00

We often take a part of our summer vacation at Lake Junaluska, which is in the mountains of western North Carolina, about 30 minutes west of Asheville and 2.5 hours north of Atlanta. We have a small cabin here, and for better or worse we have fallen into the routine of coming here at this time of year. A part of the appeal is the elevation (about 3000 feet above sea level), and the cooler temperatures, at least in contrast to the city. Another is the simplicity. And another is the change to re-connect with friends in the area.

The gradual omnipresence of electronic media has forced me to make decisions about which ones I will take part in, on vacation, and which ones I will avoid. I have not arrived at a perfect solution, but for now this is the practice: on vacation I do not read e-mail. I know I miss some personal correspondence, but the implication of participating in e-mail is that I am in the flow of administrative work. When I am in Charlotte, I usually read email before 7:30 in the morning (but always after a Psalm, Facebook and coffee), and I generally look at email as late as 9:00 in the evening. In that time I am rarely away from email for more than an hour during the day. So it is quite a detachment to set aside email on vacation.

This summer we are involved in a "Psalms in The Summer" project (see recent posts on this blog, or follow us at twitter/summerpsalms. I generally distill a Psalm in the morning and evening into 140 characters, and at the moment over 250 folks are following this. I also receive these into my cell phone, along with a few other posts: from Andrew Conard, Amy Forbus, Jay Voorhees, Peter Wallace, The Wesley Report, NPR Politics, Nicholas Kristof and a couple from friends in the church. I must also confess that I receive posts from Shaq.

I got into Facebook via our daughters, and I will also admit that the first thing I look for is a post from them. I think, as a parent, there is something wonderful about seeing their faces, especially given that one is in China and one in Atlanta. I do not spend a lot of time on Facebook, and don't participate in the tests or games, which are quite fine, but I am interested in what my friends are doing. Like most experiences in our culture, it seems to be a media that the baby boomers have entered into and overwhelmed---like contemporary worship services designed initially for young adults.

My participation on Facebook and Twitter is very similar on vacation and in daily life, which is to say, minimal: a few minutes (or even moments) in the morning, a few at mid-day, a few in the evening.

Inevitably, a vacation from technology (or at least significant participation in it) leaves more time for reading longer works, which is of course the critique of the web. I generally put aside reading material that I want to get to in the summer, and work my way through it. I have just finished Robert Benton's The Echo Within and Ron Rash' Serena, and have been dabbling in Beldon Lane's The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, the latter a very serious reflection on deserts, mountains and wilderness that requires close attention. I also recently met Gary Shockley at a stewardship event, picked up his The Meandering Way, and read it, marveling at how closely many of our experiences parallel each other (a new church, education in discernment, times in life when we were overextended). Some of the reading will find its way into sermons in the fall and winter, but this is more by-product than intention.

I should finally say that I do have a system for responding to pastoral and personal calls. I am available, although others during these days are more present to these needs. I have often returned home early for a memorial service, and have spoken to friends in our church, in the middle of vacation, about marital difficulty or the suicide of a family member. I quickly add that this is not a burden. I find that there persons continue to be a part of my prayer life, even as I am away.

The fact that I am writing this on a personal computer and posting it on my blog and on Facebook is an indication that I am somewhat wired, even on vacation, and this is by choice. But the engagement is different: it is mostly selective attention to friends and family, and finds its expression as reflection on the day's experience. When I return, the remainder of it will be waiting for me, finally released from the purgatory of cyberspace, awaiting some kind of response.

a junaluska fourth of july

2009-07-04T14:12:00.000-07:00

So we have been at Junaluska for the weekend of the 4th. The day began as I went with two friends to erect our tent near the lake, so we could have a place to watch the fireworks. More about that later. Then we came home and prepared to go to the parade, which began at 11. It is a quirky, somewhat campy parade, one part Americana, one part civil religion, one part mountain culture. Throw in a splash of Methodism, another of Duke, and another of free enterprise. The floats passed by, they waved at us, some threw candy at (to) us, and then it was over. I don't know which float won, but a friend in our party suggested it should be whoever threw chocolate.

We then followed the end of the parade down Lakeshore Drive, where we encounted Bishop Goodpaster and his family, and some other friends. We made our way to the Nanci Weldon gymnasium, an outdoor structure which houses part two of the July 4th extravaganza: bluegrass and barbecue. Since we had dined last night at "Butts on The Creek" in Maggie Valley (yes this is the name of a real restaurant, and my younger daughter texted saying she wanted a t-shirt), we had reached our saturation level of bbq. But we mingled, saw some old friends, resisted the urge to purchase craft items, and listened to the music. Then we walked back to our car, and returned to the cabin for lunch and then a nap. A long nap. The weather has been absolutely amazing today.

Today I can truthfully say I have not watched a minute of the television coverage of Michael Jackson, Sarah Palin or Mark Sanford...a group that certainly achieves a strong measure of diversity (race, gender,orientation and ideology), but nevertheless are not that interesting, after a time.

The day has one more agenda item, and that is fireworks by the lake. Bill, Gary and I set up the new Coleman tent this morning. Pam, Jacquie and Margaret have the food together; Eddie may well have helped in this area too. We will take our places beside the lake, and, if the past is any indication, we will enjoy a multi-sensory experience---taste, smell, sight, sound, as darkness comes to the day.

when icons are destroyed

2009-06-26T16:43:00.000-07:00

If you are a preacher, the culture has flooded your reservoir with illustration upon illustration this week. The death of Ed McMahan, then Farrah Fawcett, then Michael Jackson; the separation and impending divorce of Jon and Kate; the political and personal disintegration of John Ensign and Mark Sanford. The abuse of drugs and alcohol, a presenting issue in the case of each celebrity; the personal journey as continual facial reconstruction; the abandoned angel as heroine, the dutiful sidekick cast aside by a series of wives, and depleted by a mountain of alimony payments. The accident waiting to happen, a passive/aggressive and immature male meets a hyper-organized and somewhat dominant female---this can work, perhaps with one or two children, but not eight, but the economic benefits hold it together, at least for a time. And the false persona of two politicians who would judge others and find themselves sliced by the same knives they had wielded.

This has been a bad week for American popular and political culture. The struggle with money, sex and power overtakes the advantaged and the venerated. If these are icons, they are windows into the darker reality: the wealthy entertainer who spends the night unsupervised with the children of other families, the sexual goddess who experiences a painful and public death, the entertainer who runs through the assets before the end of his life. A happy and even religious couple separates before our eyes. Two public officials, standing on the front lines of the culture wars, now find themselves asking for the same compassion they have been so unwilling to extend to others.

"Do not be conformed to the world", the scripture teaches, "but be transformed by the renewing of your minds." Christians participate in the popular and political culture, shaping it to some extent (see the excellent recent work of Andy Crouch), and yet at times we have a bit of unease about it all. And yet a week like the one that has just passed brings us face to face with the reality of self-destruction, and with the corresponding need for redemption, or at least sanity.

lindsey parr goes to the dominican republic

2009-06-25T13:18:00.000-07:00

One of the four areas of ministry focus for the United Methodist Church over these four years (08-12) is to develop principled Christian leaders for the church and the world. I am blessed to serve a congregation that embraces this mandate: we had the experience of celebrating the graduations of three of our members from theological schools in May: Jamie and Holle Wollin, from Asbury Theological Seminary, and Stephanie Wilhoit, from Duke Divinity School. In addition, a mission team traveled to Haiti in May, our third team there since January, and of the twenty persons (who were involved in a school, an orphanage, a clinic, a microcredit and a local church), eleven were between the ages of twenty and thirty, and thirteen were younger than 35!

I want you to know about Lindsey Parr, another of our members, who will be served in the next year in the Dominican Republic with the DREAM project. You can learn more about her here. Lindsey is a recent graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill and has sensed a call to serve children in the Dominican Republic (she has served previously there and in Haiti). I hope you will keep up with her experience at her blog, and include her in your prayers. I am convinced that she is on the way to becoming a principled Christian leader for the church and for the world.

psalm 23

2009-06-18T07:35:00.000-07:00

A young man was trying to sort out what to do with his life. He did have a sense that God was calling him to do something, and this call had led him from New York City to rural Kentucky, where he found himself living in a monastery. Being in a monastery did not always help him to feel more spiritual, or give him any clarity about his direction in life. The monastery did put in touch with the Psalms, which were read every two weeks. This young man, Thomas Merton, wrote a prayer that expressed something of his search at that time:

“O Lord God, I have not idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire to please you. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear. And you will never leave me to make my journey alone.”

Merton’s prayer has within it echoes of the 23^rd Psalm, which begins with the words the Lord is my shepherd. It is an act of trust: who is going to be our guide? It begins as a call to obedience. Whose voice are we going to listen to? The psalm calls for a response in the words of the gospel hymn, to “trust and obey”. And in that trusting and obedience, there is a realization: “I shall not want”. Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, and God provided each day, enough for that day.

To say “I shall not want”, is to say “I have everything I need”, I have “enough”. This is an important word for us, given the experience of our community, our country, our world over the past year. We are prone to hear a different voice, saying “You do not have all that you need”, “there is not enough”. From a human point of view, there is never enough. From a human point of view, we live in perpetual scarcity. But from the psalmist’s perspective, there is perhaps not abundance, but there is enough, it is sufficient, “I shall not want”.

This is a psalm about the basics of life. The images that follow next, about green pastures and still waters, were really about survival, what was necessary: food and drink. The shepherd would supply the need. Years ago the psychologist Abraham Maslow talked about a hierarchy of needs, and the most basic needs were physiological: food, water, breathing, sleeping. In his pyramid, the next need was safety, then belonging, then self-esteem, then what he called actualization: morality, purpose, creativity. But at the foundation was the question: will I survive?

When we know this, we have the confidence to move more deeply into the psalm. We have focused on the external---what we have or do not have---now we move to the internal---and we can begin to hear the psalm in a different way. He makes me lie down in green pastures (rest), he leads me beside still waters (recreation), he restores my soul.

This is the great work of God, the personal and spiritual renewal of his children, and as we trust and obey we are guided forward in the journey: he leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. A better translation is that he leads us to walk in the right path. To be led down the wrong path is the road to destruction. For a sheep, to take the wrong path was to be separated from the shepherd, to be in danger of predators, and this could be a matter of life or death.

A word here, about this image of the shepherd. The shepherd is one who leads. In the gospel, Jesus is the good shepherd. The sheep hear his voice and they know and follow him.

I love being a pastor, and one of the images, across the centuries, of being a pastor is a shepherd. This week I will attend Annual Conference at Lake Junaluska, along with a number of our staff members and lay delegates. I always attend the ordination service and it is an opportunity for me to reflect again on what I started out to do, what I felt God was calling me to do, as a young man, and what I find myself doing now.

Over the last 26 years the church has become a much more complex institution, serving an infinitely greater variety of needs, having increasingly demanding expectations placed upon it. It helps me to go back to this basic image. The role of the pastors, and I would include all of our clergy and someone like Adam Ward in this definition, is to lead us to sources that not only sustain life but to help life to flourish: biblical teaching that is like solid food and not junk food; great music that inspires; Christian community where forgiveness and growth occur; outreach to others that meets the most basic needs of life: food, shelter, protection, education, faith.

And now we come to our focus for this morning: though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. There is the recognition that we are sometimes in the valley of the shadow of death. These are the dark times, the confusing dilemmas, the despairing moments. The mystics call this the dark night of the soul. The whole biblical tradition had wrestled with the valley of the shadow of death: Abraham, called to sacrifice Isaac, Jacob struggling all night with someone, maybe an angel, maybe God. Jesus agonizing in the Garden of Gethsemane and later on the cross.

In the dark times, this psalm is helpful. Time and time again I will be leading in a memorial service, and we have entered the sanctuary and offered words of greeting and prayed and sang a hymn, and then we have read this Psalm, and when those gathered begin to say these words, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me”, something happens.

The effect of these words is calming, healing, almost tranquilizing. They are a response to a powerful reality. The psalmist is correct to name the elephant in the room, and that is fear. We live in a culture of fear. In part this is based on marketing. Marketers know about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they know about fear. And so we really need a certain product because of the fear of….our own personal safety, or a catastrophic health incident, or, having sufficient financial resources. Politicians play upon our fears: if the other side gets in office, you will be unsafe, you will be out of work, you will you’re your life and liberties. And religion has made use of fear as well. When I was a little boy, many of the largest churches in our community preached, in essence, a gospel of fear. If you do not change your life, you will burn in hell. I remember those messages even now.

The problem with fear is that it does not motivate us. Over time, it paralyzes us. And in more subtle forms, fear can grip us, fear of death, fear of the unknown, fear of losing something that is important to us, our work changes, our children grow up, our health declines. We are sometimes stuck in the valley of the shadow of death, and paralyzed by a fear that we cannot get beyond. The psalm helps. I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. The psalm does not deny that threats that surround us; the psalm simply affirms that we are not alone. God is with us.

This is a brief psalm, only six verses, and for that reason many can recite it from memory. In verse five the imagery shifts, from shepherd and sheep to guest and host, but again, the teaching is simply reinforced: a table with food and drink, the anointing of protection. The host protects the guest, provides for the guest, even in the presence of the threat of enemies.

The psalm concludes with a promise. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. The Message actually translates the literal meaning of the Hebrew more accurately: Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life. God is not passively keeping a distance from us. God is actively pursuing us, for our good.

The sixth and last verse: I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. To dwell in the house of the Lord is to inhabit a different world. The house of the Lord was the temple, of course, and for the Christian this is heaven, but it is also this life, speaking practically for our congregation it is the sanctuary and the atrium, it is wherever God’s people are, wherever the community gathers, it is a confirmation that we are not alone.

We have moved, in the course of the psalm, from the valley of the shadow of death to the house of the Lord. And this is a journey that many of us have made: from an initial crisis, a threat, a fear, a paralysis, to the knowledge that we are not alone, to the reminder that God, and at times through his people, provides for us, to the presence of God, who is our refuge and strength, and his people, who are his dwelling place.

This morning we hear this psalm in the context of a meal, a feast that has been prepared for us. As we receive the bread and cup, we remember that God provides for us, at a most basic level: I shall not want.

As we receive the bread and the cup, we know that we are strengthened not only physically but also spiritually: he restores my soul.

As we walk toward the altar, and then as we walk away from the altar, we are reminded that life is a gift of grace that we receive in order to give. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

As we kneel or stand to receive the bread and the cup, we know that a table has been prepared for us, and even as we become more conscious of our enemies, those with whom we have conflict, we also count our blessings: we know that our cup runneth over.

As we sit in the pew after receiving, we might reflect on the comings and goings of our lives, the straight paths and the wandering diversions, times of nearness to God and others times when God seemed far away, and yet it is true that God has always been following after us, even chasing us: goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

And just to be together, for a moment, to stand at the end of the service, knowing that through the bread and the wine God dwells in us, and that we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

These are the gifts of God for us, a loaf of bread, a cup of wine, a favorite psalm. They sustain us with the basic necessities, they protect us from danger, they guide us in the path. The 23^rd Psalm is about everyday life---the necessities---but it is also about crisis, and perhaps then we hear the voice of the good shepherd most clearly and compellingly, when we worry about the basics, when life is threatened, when we are not sure if we are lost, or headed in the right direction. In those moments to pray the 23^rd psalm is enough.

Sources: Thomas Merton, Thoughts In Solitude. Scott Bayer-Saye, Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear. Clint McCann, Great Psalms of The Bible.

psalms in the summer: part five

2009-06-16T09:04:00.000-07:00

In an essay found in Wisdom from The Monastery, Demetrius R. Dumm, O.S. B., quotes the well-known passage from the Rule of Benedict that "nothing is to be preferred to the work of God". This work, he notes, is chiefly the reading and singing of the psalms, which has formed the core of monastic life for 1600 years. This has importance for protestant and evangelical Christians, however, in that it speaks to our need to read the scriptures in community (for an excellent resource on this subject, see Dennis Okholm's Monk Habits For Everyday People [Brazos Press]).

In the essay, Dumm reflects first on the importance of time, and the prior claim of God upon our time. This is a subject that distresses many parish ministers; not only the joke about a service of worship going five minutes beyond noon, but swimming against the stream in a culture that values other activities above worship. In a Benedictine monastery, such as St. John's in Minnesota, where I spent a week last summer, there are seven distinct periods a day, where the monks and guests drop what they are doing and gather for the reading and hearing of scripture.

It is all about time. Dumm writes:

"Time is one of the most precious gifts that we humans receive from God. It is clear that Benedicts wants his monks (my insertion: that God wants us) to acknowledge this gift by returning choice portions of their time each day to God. In this way, they will practice the most basic form of hospitality, which is to make room in their schedules for the entertainment of God's real but mysterious presence".

He then moves to the place of the psalms in the "work of God", answering, in effect the question "why the Psalms?"

"The constant chanting of the psalms is intended to immerse the monk in a world where God's presence is felt and where God's goodness is praised. The world is made accessible to the monk through personal faith, which finds the gift of God at the center of all reality, in spite of much evil and violence on the surface of human life."

What is the method for such a transformation? The author continues: "For the purpose of achieving this prayerful immersion, Benedict prescribed that his monks should memorize the entire Psalter." At an early stage in my Christian life I was involved in a program of scripture memorization. I found it to be helpful, if sometimes simplistic in its application. In hindsight, however, I now realize that I have the scriptures, because of that very experience. It is ironic that Catholics can teach us something about the memorization of the Word; our stereotypical perspective, that we are often more grounded in scripture, being called into question.

How does one get started in this? "This must have been a daunting task for the younger members of the monastery. But they would have been greatly assisted and encouraged by the older members, for we can well imagine that they were carried along, as it were, on the waves of biblical words provided by the elders. Over the years, the effect would be that the minds and memories of all the monks would be filled more and more with expressions of praise and gratitude."

How might the church be renewed? How might the faith be passed from one generation to the next? Our responses to these questions quickly go to style or method or technique, and we often ignore the matter of content. Could it be that we do not trust the scriptures themselves with the power to transform us, to ignite a new generation, to sustain our traditions of Christianity?

This summer we are reading the psalms, immersing ourselves in the 150 psalms. You are invited to join us here. Could a new generation of Christians be exposed to words that might fill them, more and more, with praise and gratitude? At a deeper level, might they discover, in even one psalm, the gift of God at the very center of all reality? And could they come to believe that God, and the word of God, does indeed have a prior claim upon us, upon our lives, upon our time?

western north carolina annual conference highlights

2009-06-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

A highly personal and subjective reflection on our annual conference:

1. Bishop Goodpaster was efficient and inspiring in his leadership of this, his first conference with us. The trains ran on time. He gave us a vision, 300K members, 30k new worshippers, 3k volunteer in mission teams, 300 remissioned churches, 30 new churches. It is a great vision, and I think, given the right equipping, our conference can reach this goal.

2. A really astonishing ordination service, and here I am speaking of a spontaneous invitation to those present to come forward and explore the call to full-time Christian service. A significant number of persons came forward and I watched in awe as an African-American woman stood and gave thanks to God for someone in her family who had walked forward. This was clearly an answer to prayer.

3. The Bishop led us in a prayer of repentance for our loss of members. Again, a very fitting act of ministry. I have often felt that we needed to do this, at General Conference, every four years.

4. A very biblical and theological sermon by Edgardo Colon-Emeric of Duke Divinity School, in English and Spanish. I also appreciated Michael Williams, whose sermons were in the story-telling vein. Edgardo was linear, Williams non-linear.

5. Reconnecting with many close friends. I cannot overestimate how important this is to me.

6. The 50th birthday party of a friend, and the commissioning of another friend.

7. Eating with some of our church members at Clyde's and Duvalls. Two places in Waynesville where the locals eat, good food at a good price. And my wife's sugar free "Shoney's" strawberry pie.

8. Walking around the lake (2.5 miles) each day.

9. Beginning to read The Eighth Day of Creation, a gift from my friend Clift Black, an elder in our conference who teaches at Princeton Seminary.

10. Leading a small portion of the presentation of the 32 amendments. I think 8 of them passed in our conference, with the worldwide amendments failing approximately 8-1.

11. An impromptu conversation with the husband of a clergywoman. She is a good friend but I had never met him. They are interesting in a number of respects, among them that their son plays in the NFL.

12. The memorial service; increasingly, these are persons I know quite well. One was the minister of visitation at the Mount Tabor Church, where I served from 1997-2003. He died in September. Another was one of the former senior pastors of Providence. And yet another was the wife of one of my mentors. The inclusion of the elders in this service was also moving.

Twelve seems to be a good place to conclude. Bishop Goodpaster appears to be both missional and evangelical, and that is our need, at the present time. I left Junaluska thankful for the days spent in conference, looking forward to the unfolding of the vision, and also deeply happy to begin a seventh year with the people of Providence UMC.

soundtrack

2009-06-07T17:45:00.001-07:00

Buddy and Julie Miller, Chalk
Lucinda Williams, Crescent City
Sly and The Family Stone, Everybody is a Star
Van Morrison, Quality Street
Donna The Buffalo, Way Back When
Wilco, Impossible Germany
The Band, Baby Don't Do It
Diana Krall, Cry Me A River
Jim Lauderdale, Tales From The Sad Hotel
Darrell Scott, Long Time Gone
Emmylou Harris, Satan's Jewel Crown
James Taylor, Mexico
Solomon Burke, That's How I Got To Memphis
Levon Helm, Atlantic City
Linda Ronstadt, Heart Like A Wheel
Willie Nelson, Songbird
Allman Brothers Band, In Memory of Elizabeth Reed
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Blackbird
Pierce Pettis, God Believes In You
Robert Earl Keen, My Home Ain't In The Hall of Fame
Bruce Cockburn, All The Diamonds In The World
Nanci Griffith, Gulf Coast Highway
Gillian Welch, By The Marks Where The Nails Have Been

psalms in the summer: part four

2009-06-05T19:39:00.000-07:00

We are a few days into our summer immersion into the Psalms. Today, June 5, included the reading of Psalms 9 (morning) and 10 (evening). Some of you have joined as followers on twitter, for which we are grateful. We are posting a 140 character response/reflection each morning and evening, and included some of the feedback from followers.

Why the Psalms? I came across this writing from Ellen Davis, in her Getting Involved With God:

"The Psalms model ways of talking to God that are honest, yet not obvious---at least they are not obvious to modern Christians. They may guide our first steps toward deeper involvement with God, because the Psalms give us a new possibility for prayer; they invite full disclosure. They enable us to bring into our conversation with God feelings and thoughts that most of us think we need to get rid of before God will be interested in hearing from us." (5)

What strikes me about this commentary by a very wise biblical theologian is the sense that it is culturally, psychologically and theological accurate. She notes our cultural propensity for self-deception and pride; we avoid God, or come to God in ways that are sometimes not who we are but who we imagine our religious selves to be. This image (false self) is one that is often marketed to us by the industry of Christian publishing and and modeled by the persona of religious celebrity. She is on target psychologically: "full disclosure" is the therapeutic encounter with this false self (think Psalm 51), en route to the true self (this was Thomas Merton's guiding image, powerfully present early in his writings, especially The Sign of Jonas). And she speaks profound theological truth: the psalms are the raw materials of the divine-human relationship, God's revelation and our apprehension of this gift by faith, God's strength and our weakness, God's mystery and our incomprension. Psalms that we know well---Psalm 8, 23, 51, 139--have the capacity to speak to us again and again, and precisely because we are constantly living in the condition that Ellen Davis describes.

And so I hope you will embark with us in the journey through the Psalms this summer.

when life is a mess (pentecost)

2009-06-01T08:20:00.000-07:00

If you want to hear the sound of great laughter, someone has commented, tell God about your plans. We do want order and we want control. And that is good. Graduating from college in four years is a good thing. Planning for retirement is a good thing. I am all for having a plan. But many of us have had the experience of seeing our plans hijacked. We are headed in a certain direction and something or someone comes along and revises our agenda. Maybe a part of our fascination with Jon and Kate and their eight children is that here is a woman who is pretty into order and control, and along come eight children who are pretty intent on destroying the order and wrestling control away from her. Not to mention the more recent developments which you can learn about as you stand in line to buy groceries. It is like waiting and watching for a car crash. Why else would nine million people tune in?

Plans, control, order. We can, of course, transfer all of this to the spiritual life. We plan our lives and along comes an interruption, an intrusion. I have been returning recently to some of the writings of Henri Nouwen, and there is his experience, while he is teaching on the faculty of Harvard Divinity School, a knock on his door, a woman who simply says, “I bring you the greetings of Jean Vanier” and how all of this leads to his move to Toronto to care for one young man named Adam with special needs in the L’Arche community, and how disorienting this is, at first, and yet, it is the work of God.

Today we celebrate the gift of the Spirit to us and to the church, on the day of Pentecost. A word about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was present in creation, moving over the face of the waters. The Holy Spirit was present in the lives of the prophets: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me”, Isaiah voiced, “and has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, release to the captives, to announce that this is the year of the Lord”. Jesus read from these words in his very first public sermon, preaching at Capernaum and recording in Luke 4. The Holy Spirit was present in the form of a dove as Jesus was baptized in the Jordan. When Jesus began to explain what his departure would mean for the disciples, he told them that he would not really be leaving them, his spirit, the comforter, the advocate, would be present.

This promise finds its greatest fulfillment on the day of Pentecost. Last week we remembered the words of Jesus, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and this becomes a reality today. Pentecost occurred, not accidentally, on Shuvuot, one of the three major festivals of Judaism, which occurred 50 days after the Feast of First Fruits. It was a remembrance of Moses at Mount Sinai, reading the law seven weeks after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. And so it is a celebration of a spring harvest and the giving of the commandments.

According to Jewish law, every male was required to come to Jerusalem with an offering. And so on this day, the faithful were gathered from every nation; the miracle is not that they speak in tongues, but that each one understands in their own native language, languages they have learned while living in exile, after the disintegration of the Kingdom of David and the destruction of the temple.

The spirit, given on Pentecost, is most fully present in profession of faith (1 Cor 12), but prior to this in baptism, and later through participation in the church and the exercise of spiritual gifts (1 Cor 12-14). The Spirit always comes as a gift (John 3), and is always expressed for the good of others (1 Cor 12), especially for the body of Christ (Ephesians 4).

This is some of the background in understanding the Holy Spirit, and yet it is true that there is a great deal of confusion on this subject. Once we get a sense of what the Holy Spirit actually is, we may wonder how this relates to us, if at all.

We may think people who have the Holy Spirit are folks who seem to embody the fruit of the spirit, loving people, joyous people, peaceful people, patient people. On some days we don’t feel so holy or spiritual in these senses.

Or we may think people have the Holy Spirit if they speak in tongues, in the sense of the charismatic churches, or if there is a demonstrably intense emotional reality. Maybe this does not describe us either. Watching Phil Jackson this week, the coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, I was reminded of reading his autobiography years ago, as a boy he grew up as the child of two parents who were Pentecostal preachers, and he never had that experience.

Or we may think the Holy Spirit is given to those who are always doing spiritual things, going on retreats, meeting for prayer, using religious language: “God helped me to select this gift for a friend, God opened up this parking place for me uptown, God gave me just the right word to say.” And you may think, “this is not me.”

All of this may be true, to an extent, and yet the Holy Spirit cannot be defined or contained by any of these experiences. The Holy Spirit breaks beyond all of our constraints and boundaries. The Holy Spirit is the person of the Trinity that constantly refuses our definitions and resists our control. If God cannot be placed in a box, this is most true with respect to the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is wild, it is passion, it is energy, it is intensity, it is wind and fire and flood, but it is also silence and a still, small voice, and a peace that surpasses human understanding. The Holy Spirit is all of this.

In summary, the Holy Spirit is a mess. And sometimes we want to avoid that mess. This has been true of the mainline churches and to a degree the United Methodist Church. We love order, predictability and rationality. And so we have almost said, at times, and I exaggerate a little, to the Pentecostal churches, “You can have the Holy Spirit”, we will take God and Jesus.” And so we are big on Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, but Pentecost is like the ignored stepchild in the family.

And yet, this is a turning point in the whole history of God’s relationship with us. On the day of Pentecost, on Shuvuot, in Jerusalem, they are all together in one place. I have been to Jerusalem several times and one of those happened to be on Pentecost. We had visited the Upper Room, where Jesus had told the disciples to gather. We walked to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the burial site of Jesus. It was Sunday morning, about 10 o’clock. It was the intersection of holy time and holy space.

Churches across the centuries have contested their right to this holy ground. Now we can all be territorial about our spaces, and that might be your favorite chair at home or your Sunday School classroom, but these folks have the territorial instinct down to a sacred art. And so along comes a processional choir singing Russian music, followed by a monk dressed in his habit, with the longest flowing beard I have ever seen. Then a group of Ethiopian Christians, their beautiful black faces in contrast, just behind them, dancing with joy. As they are entering, a group or Roman Catholics is departing, chanting the liturgy in Latin. Waiting in the wings, oblivious to all of these other groups, are the Coptic Christians, who actually think they have the true claim to this space.

It was truly multi-sensory---the smell of incense, the brightness of colors, the roar of sounds, all of these different languages, none of which I understood. On one level, it was chaos. And yet, underneath it all I got it, completely. The spirit was undeniably present in the power and mystery and messiness of the moment. That day I became a Pentecostal!

On this, the day of Pentecost, we are all together in one place. Outwardly, it might seem that everything is in good order. But inwardly, because we are human beings, because we have struggles, because we have questions, because God is not finished with us, inwardly there is often disorder and confusion. Outwardly, all appears to be well. Inwardly, it might indeed be a mess. And at first the disconnect between what is on the outside and what is on the inside, between the appearance and the reality, might trouble us. But the dissonance is actually the work of God, the labor pains of a new birth, the groaning of a new creation.

God is at work in us, in you, and the instrument that God is using to push us, to poke at us, to shock us and to nudge us, is the Holy Spirit. It is the gift we did not anticipate, like the unexpected child, and yet we probably cannot imagine life without it. In the 4^th century the church elders got together and reflected on what this faith meant, and they sensed a greater need to define the Holy Spirit. Now, in a way that is humorous, and perhaps God sat in the heavens and laughed. But they worked at it, and one of the sentences from the creed, in Nicea, stands out. “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life”.

The giver of life. The spirit present at the beginning of the world, billions of years ago, moving over the face of the waters. The spirit present in the lives of Elizabeth and Mary, and the children they would bear, John the Baptist and Jesus. The spirit present in the form of a dove that would descend on Jesus at his baptism. The spirit there in the, how else can you describe them, in the “messed up” churches of Corinth and Galatia and Ephesus. John, on an island off the coast of Turkey, caught up in the spirit and given a vision, a revelation of the present and the future. The spirit was always there, giving life.

The good news, brothers and sisters, is that this same spirit, God’s spirit, is with us, now, intruding into our personal space, erasing the neat formulas that we write across the blackboards of our lives, the spirit is the unexpected child, the uninvited guest, but also the second wind, the “aha” moment of wisdom and insight, the voice of one who encourages us and the embrace of one who stands beside us and embraces us.

If you think your life is a mess, this might indeed be the spirit’s entry now. On the Day of Pentecost, this is a sign that God is with us, in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, just as he had promised.

Let us pray: Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created and you shall renew the face of the earth.

Holy Spirit, reveal yourself to us.

Surprise us with your presence,

showing up where and when we do not expect you,

speaking to us when we are not listening,

pushing us into places we have no intention of going on our own.

We believe that you have placed your Holy Spirit

your breath within each of us, and given us life.

We want to be a part of your relentless work in the world.

Do something good for others through us. Melt us, mold us, fill us.

Go ahead, despite our great limitations,

and apart from the messiness of our lives, use us. Amen.

Sources: Mike Yaconelli, Messy Spirituality. Henri Nouwen, Spiritual Direction. The prayer (substantially revised) is by William Willimon.

psalms in the summer: part three

2009-05-30T07:42:00.000-07:00

We begin the summer immersion into the Psalms on Monday, June 1. Our hope is that individuals will read a Psalm in the morning and a Psalm in the evening, across the 90 days. By spending this time daily in the Psalms, and taking one day off each week, you will read through the Psalms. Eugene Peterson writes, in Answering God,

"The extravagant claim is that the Psalms are necessary…If we wish to develop in the life of faith, to mature in our humanity, and to glorify God with our entire heart, mind, soul and strength, the Psalms are necessary. We cannot bypass the Psalms. They are God’s gift to train us in prayer that is comprehensive (not patched together from emotional fragments scattered around that we chance upon) and honest (not a series of more or less sincere verbal poses that we think might please our Lord)."

and again, in his Introduction to the Psalms,

"Untutored, we tend to think that prayer is what good people do when they are doing their best. It is not. Inexperienced, we suppose that there must be an “insider” language that must be acquired before God takes us seriously in our prayer. There is not. Prayer is elemental, not advanced, language. It is the means by which our language becomes honest, true and personal in response to God. It is the means by which we get everything out in the open before God."

The following resources may be helpful to you over the 90 days. Please join us, connect in whatever way is best for you---this blog, our twitter site, or on Facebook (simply type in "Summer Psalms" in your search there).

The following resources may also be helpful to you, for various reasons:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayerbook of The Bible
Walter Brueggemann, Praying The Psalms
Walter Brueggemann, The Message of The Psalms
Ellen Davis, Wondrous Depth
Marva Dawn, I'm Lonely Lord--How Long?
James Howell, Preaching The Psalms
Clint McCann, Great Psalms of The Bible
Thomas Merton, Bread In The Wilderness
Thomas Merton, Praying The Psalms
Kathleen Norris, Cloister Walk
Peter Wallace*, Connected: You and God in The Psalms

*Note: If you are in Charlotte on June 21, Peter will be teaching the Psalms that morning at Providence UMC.

an expanding circle (acts 1. 8)

2009-05-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

We are, by nature, people who want to venture out, see the world, expand our horizons. Many of you know that Pam and I have a daughter who live and works in Beijing, China. She is 23. We say that we must have been excellent parents, because our daughter moved as far away on the planet from us as possible; any farther, and she is coming back. I often think of that book Runaway Bunny, where the bunny goes away but the voice, the reader keeps saying, I will find you, I will bring you back. It’s a wonderful book, but twelve hours away by airplane makes that a little impractical.

But back to my point. We want to venture out, Columbus wanted to “discover” a new world, our ancestors wanted to “go west”. It is in our bones. Actually, it is also a part of our faith story. Abraham is called to go to a place that he does not know. Jesus commissions the disciples to go into all the world. And today, on Ascension Sunday, we hear the story again.

Acts 1. 8, in one single verse, sets the course for the entire book that we know as the Acts of the Apostles: You will receive power, when the Holy Spirit comes, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

This is the movement of God and it is all about going out, beyond ourselves, beyond what we know, to the place that we do not know. Jesus is with the disciples, and they are asking questions about the end times, and the establishment of the kingdom. He changes the subject.

His response to their questions, Acts 1. 8, begins with a promise: you will receive power. One of the convincing arguments for the reality of the resurrection was the change that had occurred in the lives of the disciples, Peter who had denied Jesus, the other disciples, who had abandoned him, they have become new people, something has happened, they are alive with an inner fire. What it is the difference? It is the gift of God. You will receive power The word for power, in the greek, is dunamis, our word for dynamic. Something dynamic is happening. It’ like an electrical current, running through these pages of the Book of Acts. People’s lives are changed. There is reconciliation and healing. There is growth and new possibility. There are dreams and visions of a different world. This is the mission into which the disciples are sent, and even here there is a shift. They are no longer disciples; they are apostles.

A disciple is a student, a learner, and in a sense we are all lifelong students. The physician you wish for, and our congregation happens to blessed with many of them, is one who never stops learning. It is also true in the faith: we never stop learning about the Bible, about God’s purpose for our lives and for the entire creation. We are disciples. But now we are called to be something else, something more: apostles.

To be a disciple is to receive. To be an apostle is to be sent out, sent into the world. Jesus is departing, he had promised the disciples that he was going away, but he would not leave them comfortless. As he leaves, he gives them something. You will receive power, he says, because I will be with you, I will not leave you comfortless, I will not leave you as an orphan, I am coming to you, you will receive power. The power is the indwelling Christ, it is a strength that goes beyond their own human capacity, and it is given to them for a purpose. You will receive power, and you will be my witnesses.

Literally, the greek word for witness was martyr, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends, to bear witness is an act of love. In addition, to bear witness is to speak about something, it is to give truthful testimony. I came across a very interesting article recently, about a phrase often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, who lived in the 13^th century. The phrase goes like this, and maybe you have heard it: “Preach the gospel always; if necessary, use words.” There are actually two problems with this phrase. First, Francis never said it. And second, he did not live it. The author notes that the phrase never appears in the first two hundred years following his life, in any biography about him. And in addition, Francis was known as a speaker, as a preacher, as a dramatist. One of the early biographies puts it this way: “His words were neither hollow nor ridiculous, but filled with the Holy Spirit…”. The phrase, “Preach the gospel always, if necessary use words”, appeals to us, on a couple of levels. Words have become cheap in our culture, we are bombarded with so many of them. And words have a way of coming back to haunt us; the self-deception or the hypocrisy of our words fail us and those who listen to us.

But witness includes words. In a postmodern world, although it may always have been the case, the truth comes near to us when our words and our actions resonate, when they are congruent, when there is integrity of what we say and what we do and who we are.

You will be my witnesses, Jesus says. How do we witness? For most of us this is probably not by standing on the corner of Sharon and Providence with a sign that says “Jesus saves” or “Jesus is coming soon” or “Where will you spend eternity?” Let’s say this is not our witness. This does not mean that we abandon the idea of witness altogether. The promise, you will receive power, is connected to a command, you will be my witnesses.

We witness in a number of ways: through preaching and music and the sacraments; through teaching and encouragement and hospitality; through meeting basic human needs and advocacy and generosity. I might witness through a sermon, someone else might witness through performing surgery, another might witness by being a compassionate and fair supervisor. And of course, the witness is not just for an individual; we have a common witness.

What and where is the church’s witness? Here Jesus helps us. His followers are to be witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Many scholars see this as the basic structure of the Book of Acts----Jerusalem is the context of the chapters 2-7; Judea and Samaria in Chapter 8, and the ends of the earth in chapters 9-28.

First, we are witnesses in Jerusalem. Jerusalem might be our congregation, it might include what happens on this campus, it might even extend to what happens in the body of Christ, in our relationships with other churches in our community, and with other churches in the Charlotte District. Jerusalem is a very religious place, some of you may have spent some time there, and this is where we begin. Imagine a stone hitting a smooth surface of water, this is the center of what will become a series of expanding circles, but what happens at the center is important.

Then, we are to be witnesses in Judea. Judea might be our neighborhood, people who are like us in many respects, we go to school with them, we play sports with them, we shop with them and socialize with them, we enjoy their company, and yet, the demographics tell us, at least half of them do not have a meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ that includes worship or study or service.

You will be my witnesses in …Samaria. These are folks who might live in our geographical areas, maybe even our region, but in some ways they are unlike us: perhaps they are immigrant or poor, perhaps they dress or act outside our social conventions, perhaps they are younger or older than we are, perhaps we look down upon them or judge them.

This was the historical context of the Samaritans in relation to Israel. The Samaritans had intermarried with the Assyrians in the fall of the Northern Kingdom. There was history there, there was a moral judgment there, there was a natural separation, and yet…Jesus says, you will be my witnesses to them. I think of the families our church welcomed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I think of the men and women who sleep in the Catacombs of our church during winter months. We are witnesses through our words and our actions. I think of a very active couple in our church. One summer our youth and adult leaders were engaged in flood relief in Clyde, North Carolina, in the mountains. As they worked they met a seminary intern working there, and they struck up a friendship. The intern remembered our people, and the words imprinted on our van: Providence United Methodist Church. Later in the summer her parents were in the process of moving from Ohio to Charlotte and told her they would be searching for a church home. “You need to visit Providence Methodist”, she told them. She was Courtney Randall, now serving as a missionary in Latvia. Her parents are Bill and Dulcy Michel. They attend the 8:30 service, serve on a missions committee and are active in a Sunday School class.

They saw the sign. They observed the mission. And someone invited them.

You will be my witnesses, there are expanding circles of God’s grace and mission here, in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the ends of the earth.

The ends of the earth…This is the global mission of Christianity, and the seeds of it are planted here in the words of Acts 1. 8. Why do we take the gospel to the ends of the earth? Over twenty centuries men and women have felt this call. There have been abuses: at times it has been more about culture than Christ, more about colonization than conversion. But at times the responses to the words of Acts 1. 8 have been faithful.

David Livingsone was born in Scotland and sensed a call to be a missionary in Africa. During his lifetime he was accused of being more political than spiritual. He believed that God had called him to help bring an end to the slave trade, in the tradition of John Wesley and William Wilberforce. He also sensed a call to help the Africans gain a measure of economic self-determination. Livingstone died in 1873, at the age of 60. He was buried in a place of honor in Westminster Abbey, in London. His African friends, following his wishes, had first buried his heart and entrails in what is now Zambia. Today, Livingstone is largely forgotten in secular Great Britian, but he is still a national hero in Zambia, which, according to its constitution, is a "Christian country".

You will be my witnesses, to the ends of the earth. Today I am thinking about Marcia Conston preaching Cap Haitien, to a church filled with Haitians, who all trace their ancestry to Africa, and the fulfillment of a vision of John Wesley, who said “I look upon all the world as my parish”.

The Holy Spirit comes and fills the hearts of the faithful, and like a stone that penetrates the smooth surface of water, it creates a ripple effect of expanding circles of grace. This movement, beginning where we are, moving beyond us, to people like us and unlike us, and those whom we will never meet, is the great intention of a God who cannot be kept in a box, whose grace and favor is upon all people, it flows from the mandate of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope, and it becomes real in a church that loses its life in order to find it, for the sake of the gospel.

One thing is missing. Stay here. Wait, until you are clothed with power from on high. Not your power, God, says. Mine. “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh”, God had promised the prophet Joel. And you will be my witnesses.

Sources: Dana L. Robert, Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion, Wiley-Blackwell. Mark Gallo, “Speak The Gospel”, Christianity Today, May 22, 2009. Bill Easum, The Church Growth Handbook.

psalms in the summer: part two

2009-05-27T14:49:00.001-07:00

On June 1 we will begin an experiment of immersion, over the 90 days of summer, into the Psalms. Since you have found this blog on the internet, you have some comfort level with cyberspace, so I will encourage to take a couple of steps beyond the place where you now sit (or stand). If you inhabit Facebook, simply enter the site and search for "Summer Psalms". You will find the group by clicking the icon that is "footprints in the sand". The footprints were actually taken from a beach in Haiti, and that is another story. At any rate, the "Summer Psalms" community will give you a gathering place to comment on the psalms, view and post links to great music and photograph, express yourself creatively and pray. You do not have to be a member of our church or any church, for that matter. Our conviction is that the Psalms themselves have the power to form community, as they have done across the ages.

If you like, you can also find us at Twitter. Simply go find us here
and click "enter" or "join". We will be posting, for the most part, 140 character "stream of conciousness" thoughts, fragments or paraphrases of the Psalms that can be read each day. Again, by reading one psalm in the morning and one in the evening, six days each week, you will be able to read through the Psalms over the 90 days of the summer.

Our goal is based on the simple conviction that we can take the scriptures to the people through technology, as they travel. And so I hope you will access either of these sites via your computer or phone, or both.

Thank you for participating in this "ancient-future" project. We trust that God will continue to transform minds and heart through the reading and praying of the word that is indeed "a lamp to our feet and a light to our path" (119. 105).

psalms in the summer: part one

2009-05-25T17:56:00.000-07:00

Years ago I dreaded the summer as a pastor. This is due in part to my tendency to overfocus on work, and not to appreciate what the summer can mean for a family in regard to rest and re-creation. I was trying to build worship attendance and sustain momentum, following Lent and Easter. Summer wreaked havoc with all of that. I dreaded showing up at church on Sunday morning, seeing more empty pews and parking space than usual.

At some point---and this would be the result of some lived experience, and after 27 years of serving in parish ministry---I came to embrace what summer was actually about. For our family, and for me personally, it was and is a time to recover and rest, a time to read and think, a time to pray and plan. Since I have served in larger churches during some of this time (and I have served churches of all sizes, so please do not stereotype what I am saying as being relevant only for "high steeple" congregations), I saw this as a time for the other staff to do the same; our only goals were to stay in communication with each other, as much as possible, and to try to make each Sunday as good as it could possibly be. We really have no control on who is present, and, besides, it is good if our members are themselves getting a change of scenery, slowing down, connecting with their parents or their children in other places. It might even be the work of God.

I have attempted a variety of things over these summers, and this year we are planning to focus on the psalms. Each Sunday will focus on a particular psalm, and these have been chosen in consultation with the pastors, the musicians and the congregation. Six different people will preach this summer---the three pastors, a pastoral counselor who is a part of our church, a seminary professor, and our district superintendent. I will preach eight of the 13 sermons between Pentecost and Labor Day weekend.

However, we realize that many will miss these sermons, and so we are attempting to connect with people by internet, and placing before them a spiritual goal for the summer. We are asking individuals to read the 150 Psalms over the 90 days of summer, and we will be offering a reminder about this discipline (which can be accomplished by reading one in the morning and one in the evening, six days per week) on Twitter. I will say more about this in a day or so; in the meantime you can become a follower by clicking here.

I will complete the thought in a day or two. But I do want to note that this summer spiritual exercise is not about marketing our church; it is about attempting to connect a technology with a season of the year and a portion of scripture that can be life-giving. Please share this possibility with others!

quiet

2009-05-22T18:31:00.000-07:00

It is very quiet around the house. Last week we had our younger daughter home from college, and at times several of her friends, and this included a celebration of her 20th birthday. We also had Jacques, from Haiti, with us. Pam was preparing to lead a group of 19 to Haiti, in an initiative that includes microcredit, a medical clinic, continued renovation of the School of Mercy, and a day camp at a nearby orphanage, plus a connection with the church in Cap Haitien. We hosted a dessert gathering for about 35 people, which was certainly a low-key affair but nevertheless an event.

They all headed to Haiti for the week, and the work is going well. I realize, in their absence, what life is like for many of my friends, and many of the people that I serve. You get in from work, and the likelihood is that you may not speak with another person until you enter the workplace again, the next day. I thought about all of this in relation to a gathering our church hosted for the welcome center volunteers, who staff our front desk through the week. Many (certainly not all) live alone, and it has occurred to me that this experience of 3-4 hours, once a week must meet a need in being at the hub of a very active church--a typical day would include the traffic of weekday school parents and children, the homeless who reside in our church, women attending circle meetings, participants in bible studies, musicians of various sorts and community groups---today we hosted several hundred people at a gathering of retired public school teachers. Not to mention the staff.

I also realize how different this is for many---some of the members of my church look at me, ask if I am truly by myself for a few days, and I sense that, especially among those with young children, this must seem like something of a luxury----like eating a rich dessert, or going to a spa. And there is something nice about it---it is restful, to a point, and yet one needs the discipline of mapping out what is meaningful and useful. Some of this is easy for me--I don't watch Jon and Kate plus 8, or American Idol; some less so--I do watch the Braves, and have developed some interest in the NBA finals, and I have been following a really excellent PBS documentary on the history of Appalachia. My reading, I find, is sporadic. I think I have reached the place in life where the really substantive reading that I do is generally toward some end.

Our family is beyond the physically intense years of shepherding younger children and the mentally intense years of negotiating with older children who are actually becoming young adults. When Pam and I are here, just the two of us, there is a vacuum, but nevertheless it is good. Not that we don't dream of the times, which are rare, when everyone is home. That is actually bliss. But practically speaking, this is less and less the case.

There is a tendency to fill the silence with television, and even that begins to become predictable. I know my own political propensities, but the tv commentators yield little that is informative or surprising. I do watch 30 Rock, The Office and Lost, but these are in the off-season. I probably need to map out some kind of reading goal, but having come through a very busy winter of writing (the 2010 lenten study for the umc) and a filled Lent, Holy Week and Easter schedule, sitting back and doing nothing is good, for now. For now it is quiet, but I am looking forward to the noise and activity that will resume in just a few days.

who needs the church/the wisdom of crowds

2009-05-19T11:55:00.000-07:00

In recent days our congregation has experienced a number of difficult deaths, significant illnesses, economic dislocations. I want to connect what the gospel might mean for us in this particular circumstance. And I want to stay close to the scriptures along the way.

John’s epistle strikes a continuing refrain: to love God is to keep the commandments of God. Two weeks ago I mentioned a young woman named Lauren Winner, who teaches at Duke Divinity School. In Mudhouse Sabbath, she reflects on what Judaism meant and continues to mean to her from the perspective of a conversion to Christianity. She writes, “practice is to Judaism what belief is to Christianity”. To love God is to keep the commandments, to repeat the basic practices of the faith.

I want to ask a question: how many of you have ever awakened on a Sunday morning and you did not feel like going to church? We do the practices, not because we always feel like doing them, but because they are, in the words of John Wesley, the ordinary channel of God’s grace, the stream by which God’s mercy flows. As Lauren Winner writes, “your faith might come and go, but your practice ought not waver.”

This goes against the grain of our culture. I recently listened to someone talk about a fundamental change in our culture. Imagine that a young person loves classical music, goes to I-tunes on the Internet, and downloads a few favorite pieces. Now contrast that with the following: a child is given an instrument, first the parent may have found her way to a music store, or consulted with a teacher or a friend about a particular instrument; a child is given an instrument, and then the parent locates a music teacher, who will help the child to learn; at some point the child may meet others who play the same instrument, or the child may play with a group of other musicians who are learning.

At some point the group may perform in some public setting, and so friends and family show up to hear the music, and in the process they come to appreciate it. The child, along the way, progresses. Maybe the child, along the way, hears a master musician who plays his instrument, hears a piece that he has come to know, but in a whole new way. It may that in the beginning the child did not really want to do all of this. But over time the child is actively engaged in creating music. In time, the child, who might be an adult now, may grow to love music.

To love God is to engage in a specific set of practices. In our church, we use the language of radical hospitality----welcoming people into the house of God, as Brandon Lewis did each Sunday; and intentional faith development----learning about who God is and what God wants of us; and passionate worship-----giving thanks and praise to God, not for our own sakes but for God’s glory; and risk-taking mission and service---stretching out our hands to those in need; and extravagant generosity: blessing others out of our own abundance.

These practices help us to love God and our neighbor. As John writes to the first believers, we cannot have one without the other. And these practices cannot be carried out in our own strength: apart from me you can do nothing, Jesus says, just as a branch draws its strength from the vine, just as the tree draws its life when it is planted by a stream of living water (Psalm 1).

In our own strength, we waver in the practice. We say we love God, but to love God is to keep the commandments, and to keep the commandments is to engage in a specific set of practices: inviting a neighbor to church; Disciple Bible Study; singing in the Chancel Choir; serving at Room In The Inn; tithing 10% of your income.

We cannot continue to carry out these practices in our own strength. We need the help of God and we need each other. The proverb is correct, “it takes a village”, and John Wesley wrote, “I shall endeavor to show that Christianity is essentially a social religion, and that to turn it into a solitary religion is to destroy it.”

But again, this goes against the grain of our culture, which is more about the individual. This year Michael Marsicano and the Foundation for the Carolinas brought a fascinating speaker, James Surowiecki, to Charlotte. He is the author of The Wisdom of Crowds, a wonderful book that explores a very simple idea----that there is more wisdom in a group of people than in the brightest individual, that a large group is smarter than the person with the most education and credentials. He makes the point in a number of ways, the most memorable being about the series “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?”

Imagine that there is a lot of money at stake, and you have a multiple-choice question with four possible answers, and you are stumped, you don’t know the answer. You have three options: two of the four answers can be removed. This gives you a 50% percent chance of being right. Or you can phone an expert, someone you have chosen who is really intelligent. The data suggests that this person gets the right answer about 65% of the time. There is one other option. You can ask the audience, a random group of people who showed up to watch the game show. Can you guess how often they are right? 91 % of the time.

We are sometimes inclined to think that we know it all, and yet there is wisdom in the crowd. But for our purposes it is not only about being smart or intelligent; it is more basic than that. It is about our need to be connected to others. We are at the beginning of a strategic planning process, as a church, and we have heard in feedback from our congregation that our greatest positive strength is the support people receive from and give to each other.

There was a heresy in the early church which insisted that religion was all about having a secret knowledge (this was popularized in the DaVinci Code, for example). But the first letters that circulated among the early church, and some argue that John was written as one of the earliest gospels, came from a different direction. To know about God is important. But to love God: that is the essence…but that is not all of it!

Love one another, Jesus says, as I have loved you. The theme of love is prominent in John’s Gospel, and in the letters of John: For God so loved the world; God is love; I give you a new commandment, that you love one another; since God loved us so much, we ought to love one another.

John defines love as communion, the experience of community. A significant obstacle to community is individualism, well documented by the sociologist Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, whose simple but astute observation is that more people are bowling than ever before, but fewer people are involved in bowling leagues; We are bowling, but we are bowling alone. More of us are downloading or listening to classical music, but fewer people are playing it, or showing up to hear it. Interestingly, this work appeared prior to the onset of social networking and virtual relationships, trends that would seem only to reinforce his point.

In the gospel we discover that Jesus is the vine, we are the branches, and so we are connected. The life that flows from the vine into the branches is a life of love. There are no individual, solitary Christians. We are grafted into each other, into the tree of life, to use another image from scripture, into the body of Christ, to use yet another. I cannot be a Christian without you, and you cannot be a Christian without me. For some reason God designed it all in just this way.

This has multiple meanings for us. In the 8:30 service we share Holy Communion together, an activity that includes giving and receiving, tasting and touching. In each service we celebrate the strength and blessing of United Methodist Women in our church---the connection within the circles, the outreach to those beyond us. And at 11:00 we will commission 19 people for service in Haiti next week, a reminder that the branches that grow in northern Haiti and in North Carolina draw their life from one source, from one vine.

And so a part of our conversion is into the communion, the body, the believers, the household of God. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from a Nazi prison cell, reflects on the communion that we share with each other, and on our temptation to take our life together for granted:

“It is true that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded by those who have the gift every day. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brothers and sisters is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed.

Therefore, let the one who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart. Let us thank God on our knees and declare: it is grace, nothing but grace that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brothers and sisters”.

Christianity, from the beginning, was never meant to be your private experience, or mine, your personal preference, or mine. For all kinds of reasons, we need the crowd; the crowd is the church, people who know us and love us and pray for us, but the crowd is also those who came before us, those believers who first heard the words of the gospel and letters of John, in the 1st century, and John Wesley, trying to make the gospel relevant in 18th century England, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trying to make sense of the gospel in a Nazi prison cell. And maybe some of us are trying to make sense of this faith in light of what we are living through. For all kinds of reasons, we need the crowd.

We write these things to you, John says at the beginning of his letter, writing about the Risen Lord, we write these things to you so that you may have communion with us, friendship with us, and our communion, our friendship is with God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

If there is a God---and I have staked my life on this…if there is a God, I believe we come to know this God through Jesus Christ. And if this is true, I believe Jesus was clear that the wholeness of the faith in him was to love God and to love our neighbor. And if this is true, I believe it is impossible to do this alone, in our own strength.

So, we need the crowd. We need the church. May you know the love of God that flows through the vine, Jesus Christ. May your love for God find its expression in your desire to keep his commandments. And may your love for other people be a sign of your faith in the One who gives you strength. This faith, John says, is the victory that overcomes the world. Amen.

Sources: James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds. Lauren Winner, Mudhouse Sabbath. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together.

liberian brothers and sisters

2009-05-17T16:26:00.000-07:00

Last evening I had dinner with a wonderful group of people that included Bishop Larry Goodpaster and his wife Deborah of our annual conference, Mike Collins (our conference director of missions) and his wife, and a few other friends. Also present was Bishop John Innis of Liberia. I met Bishop Innis a few years ago in England, at the Oxford Institute for Methodist Theological Studies, of which I was privileged to be a member. He mentioned that he had read my books (any author loves to hear this, regardless of how truthful a statement it might be). When I realized who he was, I noted that our congregation included Liberian members. We struck up a friendship and I invited him to come to our church; that invitation materialized on the Sunday after the 2008 General Conference. Bishop Innis confirmed our young people and baptized some of them, and preached. He also had dinner with a group of our members and shared something of his pilgrimage, which is recounted in his inspiring book, By The Goodness of God. All of this followed the extraordinary General Conference speech of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia and the first democratically elected president of a country on the African continent. She is also a Methodist, and is featured in the remarkable film Pray The Devil Back To Hell (highly recommended).

Bishop Innis has been in Charlotte this weekend, and today I took part in a forum that was held at Spencer Memorial UMC in Charlotte. The Spencer Memorial Church, under Rev. Emmanuel's leadership has developed a strong outreach to Liberians in Charlotte, and my wife Pam and I had worshipped there recently. The forum included a lunch of rice, collard greens, chicken and fruit. Bishop Innis took part in a lively discussion with a room full of people, all of whom were Liberians and had an intense desire to know about who things were going there. At times Bishop Innis challenged, at times he encouraged, at times he clarified, and at times he expressed gratitude.

I am grateful for our friendship with Bishop Innis and the people I know who are from Liberia. Pam and I will travel there in August; I will give the commencement address at the School of Theology. The experience is a fusion of mission of friendship, the local and the global; this surely has to do with the reality of migration in our world, with the shifting nature of the global church, and, I believe, with a biblical vision of the one body. And it all seems to be a work of grace, made possible "by the goodness of God".

that your joy may be complete (john 15)

2009-05-13T13:58:00.000-07:00

I am strong.

At least I think I am strong.

I like to be in control,

I like to be at the center of things.

But at times I am aware that I am not so strong.

At times I sense that I am not in control.

At times I know that I am centered not in God,

but in self.

When the illusion of my strength is made plain,

I know that I am weak,

and I must live by faith.

When the illusion of my control is apparent,

I know that I am uncertain,

and I must live by hope.

When the illusion that I am at the center of all things

is before me,

I know that I am filled with pride,

and I must live by love.

God is my strength, I am reminded.

When my own efforts reach their end, God's work begins.

When the wine has been poured out, the miracle occurs.

When I can see no farther, my blindness is cured,

and now I see, and there is grace.

Jesus says, "I am the vine, and you are the branches,

and apart from me you can do nothing."

When I am disoriented or estranged, isolated or bored,

an experience of connection leads me to assurance and safety,

an experience of life ushers in joy and new creation,

an experience of growth integrates God and self and others into a whole.

There is a wholeness about a vine connected to the branches.

There is a wholeness about a life in which the Spirit dwells.

There is a wholeness in One Person, who is the way, the truth and the life.

As I move toward a life that is as connected to Jesus Christ

as branches are to the vine,

I will be nourished with a cup and a loaf,

I will be sustained with a power and a presence,

and I will discover once again,

that the "joy of the Lord is my strength."

what if church was not a verb

2009-05-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

I have read a number of ordination papers over the past years, and a recurring theme is present in them: candidates are often good at talking about the mission of the church, but they are less skilled in discussing the nature of the church. The origin of this tendency is in our Discipline, which gives more attention to the former than the latter, and perhaps in our dna: we began as a missional sect within a larger church.

There is, however a theological problem here, and it leads to a kind of "ecclesial works righteousness": the church is defined...further, the church is valued not by what it "is", but by what it "does". All of which resurfaced for me when I came across the question of how the church might be understood as a verb at rethink church.

And so, a gentle suggestion, one that I often write on ordination papers, that we take some time to reflect on "who we are" before focusing on "what we do", on "being". We do often grasp, in some way an individual level, that God loves us for who we are, and not for what we do for God or others, but we do not often translate this to the congregational or denominational level. This is important, because congregations and denominations are sinful, they have flaws, and those who inhabit them will become disillusioned.

Can we extend the the grace of God to the church that we give to the individual? What if church was not a verb?

life and grace, abortion and torture

2009-05-08T07:24:00.000-07:00

In anticipation of Mother's Day I am grateful for the gift of my own life. I will travel a few hours south to spend Mother's Day with my mother. She celebrated her 70th birthday last month; I will be 52 in August. I am grateful that she gave birth to me as a teenager. It is a fundamental beginning point in reflecting on my own life as a gift of grace.

I picked up the copy of the First Things issue dedicated to the memory of Richard John Neuhaus. I disagreed with Neuhaus on many subjects, and politically we were often on different planets. But I do sense that his was a prophetic voice on the subject of the dignity of the human person. His is a voice that is silent in my own denomination----for example, at General Conference the subject of abortion is barely on the radar screen, overwhelmed by other (legitimate) matters. I appreciate the voice of my friend Paul Stallsworth, even if we do not think alike on other issues. On this one, we do. Thank you, Paul.

I have been thinking recently about the power of a religious voice that could link the issues of abortion and torture, the latter being, in my mind, a tragic scar upon our recent political landscape. It is sad that conservatives speak on behalf of the unborn, but not the tortured; I also lament the liberal focus on torture to the exclusion of the unborn. I would also link the defense of creation (the environment) within this larger cause. Liberals and conservatives seem to be coming together on care for the creation, and while I know these labels often distort more than they reveal, this is reason for hope.

I also think a way forward may be not to begin by casting judgment on those who practice torture or have abortions, but to first make the case that the one we might be inclined to torture may be the enemy Jesus commands us to love, and the child whose life might be terminated prior to birth might be God's gift of a more inclusive grace. I believe this to be so for gay and lesbian friends who worship in our local church. In each case we might be motivated by prevenient grace (Romans 5. 8)----the expansiveness of God's love and justice that is larger than our imaginations or categories. And in linking abortion and torture, we might not be so quick to judge those with whom we differ politically, as we choose life instead of death.

In anticipation of this weekend, I am grateful for my own life. And when I see my mother this weekend I will find a way to say "thank you".

fundamentals (1 John 3)

2009-05-05T06:46:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I ate, drank and slept sports. I did not live the liturgical year of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, and then Lent, Easter and Pentecost. I lived the sports year: baseball season, football season, basketball season. Depression set in when those seasons did not overlap (that is no longer the case; now we play football from August to February, basketball from October to June, baseball from April to October). As a kid , in the fall and winter I played basketball in our driveway until it was too dark at night to see, and in the spring and summer, if there was no one else there to play with, I would throw the baseball into the air, hit it, and then run to wherever it had landed. Then I would do the same thing, again. It was a way to pass the hours; I had a low threshold for excitement!

Malcolm Gladwell has written about what he called “the 10,000 hour rule”. When you do something for 10,000 hours, you are likely to become very good at it, and when you do something for 10,000 hours, you are more likely to be “lucky”. He talks about the Beatles, who played 8-10 hours a night in Germany, every night of the week; about Bobby Fisher, who would become the greatest chess player in the world; and about Bill Gates who would sneak out of his house to work in a computer lab, the only one of its kind in the country, which happened to be within walking distance from his house at a nearby university. The 10,000 hour rule is confirmation of an old adage: “practice makes perfect”.

I am sure, as a kid, that I practiced basketball for more than 10,000 hours. It did not make me a perfect player, but it is still a part of me. And this conversation is not limited to sports. When someone plays a musical instrument at an accomplished level, or paints exquisitely, you can be sure they have spent more time than they can recall playing scales, or drawing baskets of fruit. In every endeavor there are fundamentals: swinging a golf club a certain way, positioning your fingers on a keyboard in a certain way, learning to mix the ingredients for a particular dish in a certain way. We practice the fundamentals over and over again, and they add up to a way of life.

Christianity is not so much a set of beliefs, as it is a set of practices. Lauren Winner grew up in Asheville, then her family moved to Charlottesville. Her parents were in an interfaith marriage, Jewish and Christian, and she adopted the Jewish faith. She attended college in New York, in part to be around a high density of other Jewish young adults. She then went to graduate school at Cambridge, where she underwent a conversion to Christianity. She has reflected on what Judaism has meant and continues to mean to her. She says, “practice is to Judaism what belief is to Christianity.” But in the past few years she often thinks about all the things she misses: Sabbaths and weddings, burials and prayers…paths to the God of Israel that both Jews and Christians travel….but, to be blunt (she says, these are) spiritual practices that Jews do better.”

Why do they do them better? They have repeated these fundamental acts over and over again, the same practices, for thousands of years. The Passover meal that Jesus shared with the disciples, all of whom were Jewish, would be very similar to the meal a family would have partaken of this spring in Jerusalem. The two scripture passages for this morning take us back to fundamentals. Jesus is the good shepherd, he is our guide along this way. While most of us do not live in pastures, making sure that animals get from one place to another, we get the idea. We are, all of us, on a path from point a to point b. Sometimes the road is straight and the direction is clear. At other times we are lost, and then, miraculously, we find our way. Sometimes “God writes straight with crooked lines.”

Jesus guides us toward life, abundant life. This gift of life has come at some sacrifice: he lays down his life for us. This sacrifice does not imply that he is a victim; “no one takes my life from me, he says; I lay it down of my own accord”. The good shepherd is in contrast to the thief and the wolf. The thief steals and destroys, the wolf scatters and devours. If you have experienced personal theft, you understood the sense of violation and emptiness. The message to the disciples is simple: watch out for the forces that will leave you empty; give your life to a purpose that will lead to abundance.

It is true that we can do some things for 10,000 hours and this will lead us down the wrong path. Albert Einstein once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. One of the desert fathers put it this way: “Do not give your heart to that which cannot satisfy your heart.”

And so the right fundamentals are important. In John’s first letter, the fundamentals are clear: God and love. Eugene Peterson has written: “The basic and biblical conviction is that the two subjects, God and love, are intricately related. If we want to deal with God the right way, we have to learn to love the right way. If we want to love the right way, we have to deal with God the right way. God and love can’t be separated. “

“There are always people around who don’t want to be pinned down to the God Jesus reveals, to the love Jesus reveals. They want to make up their own idea of God, make up their own style of love. John was pastor to a church disrupted by some of these people. In his letters we see him establishing the original and organic unity of God and love that comes to focus and becomes available to us in Jesus Christ.”

And so the wisdom of I John is simple and clear: This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another. In this brief verse we are given the essential connection between truth and goodness, what we know and what we do, our speech and our actions. Believe and love, love and believe. Practice what you preach. I have enjoyed getting to know the young people in our confirmation class this year. Some are artists, some are musicians, some are athletes, they have a variety of interests and pursuits. They are becoming teenagers and that is a time in life to test out what we want to do, what we are good at, what fits naturally with our skills, Christians would say what matches our gifts. And along this path, in the years to come, you will make decisions about where you will spend your time, and what will be most important to you.

I was visiting Brenda in her home. This was maybe 15 years ago. We were good friends, we had worked together on a few spiritual retreats, Pam and I were close to Brenda an her husband Al. Brenda was also a very good tennis player, and we occasionally played tennis. She usually prevailed, so I don’t think we played too often. At the same time she had ongoing back problems, and finally she had a very intricate lower back fusion surgical procedure, very complicated.

Her rehabilitation would be about six months: two months laying flat in a bed and then sitting, two months of gradual walking and movement, two months of more demanding walking and exercise. Six months. Brenda was demoralized. I was listening; it was all sinking in. Then Brenda’s facial appearance changed. She remembered something her daughter had said earlier that day, I think to cheer her up. Her daughter Ashley had said, “you know mom, about the six months, look on the bright side, this will give you time to get really good at Nintendo…most adults are not willing to put in the time it takes to become really good at Nintendo”.

That conversation became a parable for me, and takes me back to a question: what do we give our time to? What actions do we repeat over and over again? What are our practices? For a basketball player, the fundamentals are rebounding and shooting free throws. For a vocalist, the fundamentals are pitch and tone.

For a Christian, the fundamentals are believing in God, the God who is revealed to us by Jesus Christ and loving one another. Once we get them straight, we practice these fundamentals throughout our lives. To believe God is to want to know more about him, it is to study the scriptures, it is to pray. To believe is to trust in a power that you cannot see. To believe God is want to worship God and sing to God. It is reflect, and to integrate who God is with your own life experience. And so our faith does not remain static, because our lives change.

To love one another is to look beyond ourselves, it is to honor our fathers and mothers, it is to make sacrifices for our children, it is to forgive those who have harmed us and to ask forgiveness from those we have harmed. To love one another is to think about the resources God has placed in our hands and to know these are not only for us, but they are given to us to share: our money, our food, our talents, our lives. To love one another is to make intercession for them, to enter into their darkness, their struggles. To love one another, and here Jesus voices the ultimate implications of radical hospitality, is to love our enemies---those who do not love us. To love one another is to imitate the good shepherd.

The good news is that we have the rest of our lives, as my friend’s daughter said, “to become really good at this”. And when we are good at this, by God’s grace, the world begins to experience abundant life: a person is loved, a child is fed, a stranger is welcomed, an opportunity is made possible, a dream comes true, a sin is forgiven, a burden is lifted. Maybe we have 10,000 hours to do all of this.

This morning, we have maybe an hour of worship. The longer I live the more I appreciate the particular days of the year that we worship together. This year I have connected Confirmation Sunday with All Saints Sunday, a day in November when we remember those who have died in the past year. On Confirmation Sunday we are really just getting started. On All Saints, it is about being finished, at least from an earthly perspective. The athlete stretches, conditions, practices, runs the race and crosses the finish line. On All Saints, at least from an earthly perspective, the race is finished. Over the past few weeks a number of folks in our church, and friends in other places have been running races for Multiple Sclerosis, for Lou Gehrig’s Disease, for Brain Tumor Research, for a cure for Breast Cancer. Folks of all ages are preparing, then running the race, and then crossing the finish line.

On Confirmation Sunday, we are just getting started, and so it helps to be clear about the fundamentals: believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, and loving one another. On All Saints we see the end result, how a man or woman took the baton, maybe from a parent or a mentor and carried it to the end, and then laid it down. And then someone else picks it up. Maybe a young person picks up the baton, and carries it for a time. To pick up the baton is to take up this practice, to keep it going, to pass it to the next generation. In the scripture we move from the statement of Jesus to the questions of the disciples and we have our own questions: what do I do with my life? How can I make the most of my life?

The answers to these questions, in their broadest, most fundamental sense, are there in the scripture: believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, love one another. How you work that out is the adventure of your own life. May God give you all the time you need to “become really good at it.” May God give you an abundant life. Amen.

Sources: Malcolm Gladwell, The Outliers. Eugene Peterson, The Message. Lauren Winner, Mudhouse Sabbath.

notes on the great 50 days

2009-05-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

Once I am beyond Easter, there is a sense, to borrow the phrase of the Dixie Chicks, that I am in "wide open spaces". And so a rambling post about goings on.

1. We had a great Confirmation service this morning. It is the culmination of a process of a yearlong process, and my primary intersection with it is a) a retreat and b) individual conversations with them. We make a big deal about this being their profession of faith (personal) and the link with being a part of the body of Christ through membership (social). And that it is not graduation from church!

2. I officiated at a neat wedding this past weekend in Winston-Salem, where I served prior to Charlottte. The wedding was at the Brookstown Inn in Old Salem, which is the Moravian area below downtown, it was outdoors, and the rains stayed away just long enough to have the service. A really nice couple, whom I enjoyed connecting with. And in the bargain we were able to see a few friends (but not all of our friends!).

3. I gave a talk on "The Shack" at the United Methodist retirement community in Charlotte (Aldersgate) on Friday. It was fun to get back into the book, which a) I don't think is the best novel I have read in recent memory [that might be Gilead, or Home, or Jayber Crow, but b) I do think is an excellent way of getting into the issues of providence and forgiveness.

4. I also met with a young woman in our church who is going to be involved in a mentoring program in the Dominican Republic next year (2009-2010). I am moved by the young adults in our community who want to give some of their life to service. It is a pronounced trend, for which I can only thank God.

5. A few years ago I wrote a text, " A Hymn for Resurrection People", which has been placed in several musical settings. Two years ago a friend here, Greg Cagle, arranged and recorded it. He is an excellent musician. We have made cds of the song, and copies are available for $5, with all proceeds going to a microcredit initiative in northern Haiti. For more information email me at kcarter [at] providenceumc.org. Or send $5 to Providence UMC 2810 Providence Rd Charlotte NC 28211, with a return address so that the cd can get to you.

6. I am really getting into Lost. It makes all the sense in the world if you let go of the concept of chronological time. As Edwin Friedman once said, time is not like a telescope through which you see into the past or future. Time is more like a collapsed telescope in which all time, past and future is in the present. So hang in there with it----it will be over soon enough---and don't get hung up on making sense of time travel.

7. On a family note, our daughter Liz is working and flourishing in Beijing, our daughter Abby is coming home from college next week (yeah!) and Jacques is also coming home from college, to be with us for a time before he goes on for the summer to see his parents in Cap Haitien. Meanwhile, Pam and I are thinking ahead about the mountains and July.

8. I have been writing a great deal lately. I was asked to write seven blog posts for Theolog, the website of the Christian Century. These began on Easter Sunday, and conclude on Ascension of the Lord. I also wrote several pieces for Lectionary Homiletics. And I finished a longer work that will be the Lenten study for 2010 (United Methodist Publishing House). It is already being advertised, if you receive a Cokesbury catalog.

9. I did see a few hours of the Quail Hollow Championship here in Charlotte. I am not a great fan of golf (I know this destroys the stereotype of the large membership church pastor in the south), but it is fun to walk around and take in the culture. At one point I was a few feet from Tiger Woods, who is remarkable.

10. My initial and very tentative thoughts about the Proposed Constitutional Amendments for United Methodists: some I like, some I can live with or without, some I am opposed to. The whole matter resurfaces our fundamental divisiveness and leads to the realization that we are almost "constitutionally incapable" of making decisions at the general church level.

11. I have been reading the issue of First Things that is devoted to the memory of Richard John Neuhaus. Neuhaus is more political conservative than me, and at times I thought his head was in the sand in the midst of the priest abuse scandals (labeling many who wanted to focus on it as anti-Catholic). But, I must confess: Neuhaus was an American prophetic, having marched with Martin Luther King, and sensing a natural progression of social inclusion in his advocacy for the unborn. I regret a comment I made on a prior blog about the one time that I met him; he comes across, in the issue of FT as, yes, forceful and even arrogant at times, but also pastoral and personal in his concern for others. His Freedom For Ministry is a classic text on pastoral work. I commend this issue for anyone who wants to understand what has been happening in North American Christianity over the past decades, especially the interface of religion and politics. Neuhaus really does defy the sterotypes we so easily ascribe to him.

12. Pam and I saw the movie Pray The Devil Back To Hell, which is about the women's struggle for peace in Liberia. We will be traveling there in August, at the invitation of Bishop John Innis, and one of the Liberian members of our congregation had urged me to see this movie. It is a moving documentary, and if you are interested in social change, or the cause of peace and reconciliation in our world, or the experiences of our brothers and sisters in Christ in a desperate circumstance, you will love this movie.

Thanks for stopping by, and God's blessings in these 50 days!

emmylou harris at merlefest

2009-04-28T18:25:00.000-07:00

We arrived in the afternoon, at about 2:45. It was hot, especially for the mountains of North Carolina. Tift Merritt was completing her set, and it was my own loss, and poor sense of timing, that i missed most of it. The crowd was attentive and appreciative, and one does sense that there is in her future an evening performance on the main stage. One of the strengths of Merlefest is the passing of the baton to the next generation (I have witnessed this with Nickel Creek and the Duhks), and such a venue would be good both for her and the festival.

Moving into the evening, the focus was really on three acts: Doc Watson and friends, Emmylou Harris and Sam Bush. Doc Watson performed with a band that included his grandson Richard on guitar and Sam Bush on the fiddle. Doc seemed to be in good spirits, and I continue to be amazed that he is able to perform at the age of 86 (please forgive the "agism")! He ran through a number of standards ("I Still Miss Someone", "Columbus Stockade Blues", "Deep River Blues") and one of the additional highlights was a medley that included "Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On", and "Tutti Frutti". His set concluded with the traditional song in memory of Merle. It was written by a friend of Doc's, and is sung by another friend (I cannot recall either name); it is one of those Merlefest rituals that means more to me in some years than in others. This year it seemed to have an added meaning, in that I listened more closely to the anticipation of Doc have Merle to "pick around with once again". As Doc left the stage he said goodbye to the crowd with an additional "see you next year, God willing". For those steeped in the biblical tradition, it was a genuine expression of popular piety.

Sam Bush came later in the evening, and as always he stretched the Merlefest crowd in a direction that is healthy for the tradition. He embodies improvisational bluegrass at its best, and his energy level, late on a Saturday evening, was breathtaking, particularly given that he had already played on most every stage that day. It is no exaggeration to say that Sam Bush is integral to what Merlefest is all about. His enthusiasm for the festival is clearly returned by an adoring crowd that senses they are in the presence of a master.

Emmylou Harris took the stage in between Doc Watson and Sam Bush. She was introduced as a "matriarch of Americana music"; one sensed that she did not fully appreciate this designation, but she is something of a living legend, a mentor and an artist who has transcended the generations. She began with "Return of The Grievious Angel", and then moved into "One of These Days", "If I Could Only Win Your Love", "Red Dirt Girl" and "Orphan Girl". She then covered "Poncho and Lefty", "Going Back To Harlan", "Get Up John" (with Sam Bush on the fiddle), an acapella version of "Bright Morning Stars" (from Angel Band, one of my very favorite cds), "Your Long Journey" (written by the Watsons, and with an appalachian/scottish highland feel), and "Love and Happiness" (from her collaboration with Mark Knopler). She also offered "Bang The Drum Slowly", a moving song in memory of her father, and the encore was "Leaving Louisiana in The Broad Daylight" (again, with Sam Bush accompanying).

It was a remarkable set, and it fully captured the breadth of Emmylou's career, from the simplicity of Pieces of The Sky to the complexity of Wrecking Ball, from her interpretation of the works of others (with homage to George Jones and Merle Haggard) to a confidence in her own writing. Her voice was strong and clear, even if its range stays closer to the middle, which I sense as a strength.

I realize that I have now seen Emmylou Harris in concert four times over the past thirty years, and she continues to perform with an integrity and a clarity that is compelling. She represents "roots" or "americana" music (whatever that is!) in holding together the old and the new, the acoustic and the electric, the traditional and the progressive. On a Saturday evening in the cool mountains of western North Carolina, I had the sense that I was in the presence of our a "matriarch", in that so much of what is good about our music has passed through her life into ours, and there is a sense that there is more to come.

(this blog also appeared at No Depression)

the sacrament of creation

2009-04-24T06:01:00.000-07:00

On Easter Sunday we announce the good news of the resurrection. On the second Sunday of Easter we reflect on the implications of this central event for our lives going forward. In this way we are not so different from the first disciples.The epistle lesson for today, from I John, echoes the better-known Gospel ("what we have seen with our eyes...and touched with our hands"). Just as the earliest Christian communities needed to relate the truth of the gospel to their own lived experience, so do we in our own time. "We declare to you what we have seen and heard," John writes on behalf of his community, about the Easter experience.

Easter is a day, but it is also an experience, it is a moment in time, but it has implications that change us, and not only us, but all of life.

After the resurrection, the disciples gather together, they try to make sense of what has happened, they get on with their lives. But in a sense everything has changed. If anyone is in Christ, the Apostle Paul wrote, there is a new creation, the old has passed away, all things have been made new. We move from resurrection to new creation. Easter is not limited to the renewal of an individual life. Easter is the renewal of the creation. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.

In the overlapping of calendars Easter Sunday precedes and falls very near to the festival of God’s creation, which coincides with Earth Day. And there is a vital connection. Someone has noted that Christianity is the most materialistic of the world’s great religions. Christianity was really defined, in the first two generations, in contrast to gnosticism, a worldview that was sharply different.
Gnosticism held to the conviction that spiritualilty was good, and materialism was bad. Gnosticism, which was later identified as a heresy, separated the spirit and the body, the soul and the earth, and wisdom about spiritual things was given only to a few, as a kind of secret knowledge. Thus the word “gnosis”.

Christianity is something altogether different. We were created from the dust of the earth, or the mud of the ground. God created everything that existed and called it good. The Psalmist could look at skies and proclaim that the “heavens are declaring the glory of God”.

Jesus was the divine word made flesh. He stood in the waters of the Jordan River and was baptized. He spent time in the wilderness, where his priorities were tested, hiked to the top of Mount Tabor to listen for God’s voice. He used the substance of the earth---water, wine, bread---to point to the things of God, to show their essential connection. The animals that surrounded him---the birds of the air, for whom God provided, or the foxes who had dens to live in----were reminders of how we as humans are sustained daily.

In speaking of what it meant to give our lives fully to God, he said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7. 38). He related his own spiritual thirst, at the point of his greatest need, to his desire for God. People who lived in the desert understood. After the resurrection he was present to the disciples as a physical body: he asked them to touch his wounds, he ate meals with them.

Jesus looked at the natural world to understand who God is and who we are in relation to God and to each other. He modeled this for us, he taught us in this way. Consider the lilies of the field, he said, and then he would contrast them to Solomon, the great king, in all of his splendor. Which is more glorious? And, of course, the disciples would have to say, the creation.

The creation is God’s gift for our renewal. The creation is God’s very gift of life itself. I asked a few friends in our congregation to think about faith in relation to the environment, in preparation for today. One who is a leader in the conservation of water talked about our waste of this most precious and basic resource, and the demands in the near future on the water that we take for granted. Someone else talked about initiatives that have been supported by our church, to dig wells in Africa, some in partnership with the YMCA and others in partnership with a native African student minister. I think of the pump in front of our medical clinic in Haiti, and the water system developed just this year for the Haiti School of Mercy.

If we are thirsty, we walk out of the sanctuary to the nearest fountain. It is cold and plentiful. We are refreshed and renewed. And we are also very fortunate. We are blessed.

2.4 billion people in our world are not so fortunate. They do not have access to clean water.
God created the world for his own enjoyment, he created us to protect and to shepherd all of the other resources. One of the central images in scripture is the harvest, and Israel’s life was organized around harvest festivals. The wine and the bread symbolized God’s provision for his people through difficult, wilderness times. A land flowing with milk and honey was the promise to those who were faithful.

And so the renewal of the earth happens as we receive the gifts of the earth, our food, and as we give thanks for that. A part of giving thanks is our remembrance of those who lack what we have been given.

How does this happen, in practical ways? Members of our church have put together several thousand meals for the hungry through Stop Hunger Now. Those who lack shelter during the winter share a meal with us on Wednesday evenings. Meals are taking to the homeless, to the homebound, and sometimes placed in backpacks for elementary school students who would otherwise go to bed hungry and wake up hungry over the long weekend. We are trying to figure out how to provide a meal a week for students at the Haiti School of Mercy—that’s 190 students. Maybe we will start with the Friday meal.

It is a hungry planet. At its most basic level, God’s provision is water and bread. For Christians, we connect this with the sacraments---baptism, God’s gift of water, and holy communion, God’s gift of bread. A sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

When we bless the water with a prayer of thanksgiving, we remember how God has used water to save and sustain his people. When we bless the Holy Communion, we remember how God created the world, and then us in his image, and how Jesus blessed this meal, and encouraged us to eat it, and likened the bread to his body.

One of the words for Holy Communion, the one that comes from the literal New Testament greek, is eucharist, which means thanksgiving. Those who have died and risen with Christ see the world in a new way. We see all of life as a gift, perhaps all of life as a sacrament.

We receive it with thanksgiving, we offer it to God with thanksgiving, we share it with thanksgiving. After Easter, and because he is risen, we live in the new creation.

In the new creation, spirituality is not something that happens only when our eyes are closed in prayer. One of our members, a student who attends college in the mountains, sent me a note with three photographs attached, and talked about the powerful experience of standing under the waterfall with the water rushing right down in front of her. Another friend talked about walking along the ocean and the immensity of it and his humility in the face of the creation.

When we are in the presence of God, we are aware of his power and our humility, and for many of us this happens in the creation. Many of us had some of our most powerful spiritual experiences as young people at camps, as scouts, on retreats. This is also related to the beauty of creation, I think of the flowers last Sunday that really were stunning, the beauty of the cross that stands in our atrium today, the work that is done by those who care for the gardens of our church. I think about the last 2 or 3 days in Charlotte! What a gift!

In the new creation, we begin to see that mission is not something we do for other people. Mission is sharing the creation that God gives to all of us, and this includes water, wine, bread, the word, all of the gifts of God. In our congregation this happens in a variety of ways: a woman is an environmental educator, a man spends a lot of time with rural farmers, a nurse serves in Haiti, a develop leaves a substantial part of a several thousand acre project undeveloped, to be enjoyed by future generations, and a restaurant manager supplies gift certificates to those in need of a good meal. In all of these ways we share the gifts of God’s creation.

In the new creation, we understand stewardship in a new way. We sometimes think of stewardship in relation to money, and money is important. We might think of stewardship in relation to the church’s need for money in order to support God’s mission. Your money makes all of the ministries of this church possible, and I think you for your generosity. This is a part of stewardship, but only a part.

Stewardship is about how we use all of the gifts that have been placed in our hands. This has macro implications----climate change---and micro implications, and I want to focus there. I want to focus on our habits. As the usher said in the rural church that I served many years ago, “I am going to stop preaching and go to meddling.” How does all of this relate to our faith, at the level of our behavior? I received this note from a member of our church.

“I have begun to understand what many have understood for centuries – the interdependence of all life and that we throw that interdependence out of balance when we consume huge amounts of resources without regard to the damage we do. I think I had a road-to-Damascus moment when I began to see what was happening as we, the consumers, went about our normal existence in our throw-away, consumer-driven economy.”

How does all of this relate to our faith, at the level of our behavior? This question leads me to other questions.

What if the Christians of the world made the decision to provide safe drinking water for every person on this planet?

What if the members of Providence United Methodist Church decided not to drink bottled water, and to give that money, a dollar or two here and there, toward wells in the Gambia or Haiti?

What if the Christians of the world decided to share their bread with the hungry, beginning locally?

What if the members of Providence United Methodist Church decided to eat a meal each week that conformed to the average meal eaten on our planet---rice, beans and tap water, and what if we set aside that money to feed the hungry in our midst?

What if we did all of this because bread and water really are signs of God’s grace and real presence among us?

What if we came to believe that grace should never be wasted, but received with grateful hearts? What if we became more conscious about what we purchase and what we throw away?
What if we began to live more simply, so that we could be more generous?
What if we began to be more present to the beauty in this world as a testimony to God’s glory?
What if we paid attention to the footprints we leave not only on mountain trails, but on the planet?
What if we began to think not in the short-term, but in the long-term, about the air that our grandchildren will breathe and the water that our great-grandchildren will drink?
What if we began to believe that our renewal is connected to the renewal of the earth, that our salvation cannot be separated from the salvation of the earth?
What if we began to live in the new creation?
What if we began to believe that all of life is a sacrament?

easter for disoriented people (psalm 30)

2009-04-17T06:28:00.000-07:00

It is the middle of the night, you’re sleeping, and something wakes you up. A family pet makes a sound, or the phone rings, it’s a wrong number, someone trying to reach someone else, or it’s the wind moving the branches of trees around you. It is disorienting, and you find it difficult to fall asleep again.

I’m glad that it is Easter. I love the season of Lent, it appeals to the disciplined part of my nature, but given everything that has happened over the past few months, it seems like the whole world has been observing Lent. We’ve all been profoundly affected by the global economic crisis--- the ranks of the hungry and homeless are swelling, we have been cutting back in a variety of ways, retirement accounts have lost value, friends have lost jobs ---we live in disorienting times. I’m ready for Easter. I need this, and surely we all need this!

When we open the Bible, we discover that it is filled with disoriented people: Abraham called to go into a far country, Israel in slavery to Pharaoh, wandering in the wilderness for a generation, then seeing their empire/kingdom disintegrate before their very eyes, then they are sent into exile.

We see the disciples and the religious leaders who don’t quite know what to do with Jesus; the disciples don’t get it, the religious leaders get it but they don’t like it. We see Jesus who wonders if he has been abandoned by God, who knows that he has been betrayed by his friends, who is then crucified by his enemies. On Friday evening we gathered here in the darkness, to remember and perform and re-tell this story. The Bible records this long journey of suffering, and one of the images for this experience is night. The night can be chaotic, uncertain and dangerous. “I cried to you for help”, we read twice in Psalm 30. When we are disoriented we find ourselves laying awake at night. Maybe we are worried? Confused? Cistracted? Angry?

What keeps you awake at night? Knowing that there are people in our community without shelter? Knowing that there are children in our world who are being sold into slavery? Knowing there are people with gifts and abilities and initiative in our community, but with no meaningful work? Knowing there are people who do not know that God loves them?

Or, perhaps, it’s more personal: the loss of someone close; or the death of a dream; disappointment with yourself, or with God; guilt over the sins you have committed together with our whole sinful society; trying to figure out your place in the grand scheme of things, or wondering if there is a grand scheme of things?

What keeps you awake at night? Sometimes there is much that is wrong in our world, in our lives, we sense this and it bothers us. At other times, we are oblivious to it. Sometimes we are not even aware of this need, we are anesthetized to the pain and the guilt by entertainment or medication or diversion. A prominent political leader was asked what he thought about torture, and he responded, “ I sleep like a baby”. Sometimes we are “sleepwalking through life”, having grown accustomed to the status quo.

When we become comfortable, how does God get our attention? Throughout history God has spoken through dreams and visions, this is one of the ways God enters into our unconscious life. Otherwise, we might not “get it”. The Bible can be understood as an extended unified narrative in which God seeks to get our attention through his mighty acts: a beautiful and glorious creation; an act of political liberation; a set of laws; the voices of prophets, reminding us to worship God, to keep the laws, to remember the poor; and lastly, and most dramatically of all, he sends his own son---a perfect human being, the completely sacrificial life, the redemptive and yet grotesque death on a cross.

One of my favorite authors is Flannery O’Connor, a native of Milledgeville, Georgia, which is in the very center of my home state. In her lifetime she was overshadowed by other Southern authors such as Truman Capote and Carson McCullers, who were much more popular, but in the last twenty-five years their works have faded, while she has risen in stature, to be compared alongside figures like Faulkner and Hemingway. A devout Catholic, she died of Lupus at the age of only thirty-nine.

O’Connor’s short stories are filled with memorable characters, misfits and freaks: a hitchhiker kills the bickering multigenerational family who gives him a ride; a woman marries off her mentally challenged daughter to a one-armed tramp; a hypocritical Bible salesman meets a woman who has been crippled by a hunting accident, seduces her and steals her wooden leg; a mentally disturbed Wellesley student throws her copy of a Human Development textbook at the more proper middle aged woman who has been staring at her and calling her white trash. I could go on.

Flannery O’Connor was once asked why she chose to express herself in this way? She replied, “writers who see by the light of their Christian faith will have, in these times, the sharpest eye for the grotesque, for the perverse and for the unacceptable…To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures…”

EASTER is just such a story. There is nothing measured, gradual, or predictable about it. It is not like a flower breaking through the ground, winter becoming spring. It is an earthquake, a massive stone rolling away, an unsettling conversation with an angel (a messenger? a gardener? someone I know?) It is the veil of the temple being ripped into. It is the risen Lord appearing to Saul, who has persecuted him, Peter, who betrayed him, Mary, who grieved the loss of him. It is disorienting, it is enough to wake us up! It is the riveting and true story that is at the center of life for all who have faith. As Karl Barth, the great theologian has written:

“In Jesus, God himself came into the world, which he had created and against all odds still loved…It happened through this man on the cross that God cancelled out and swept away all our human wickedness, our pride, our anxiety, our greed and our false pretences, whereby we had continually offended him and made life difficult, if not impossible, for ourselves and for others. He crossed out what had made our life fundamentally terrifying, dark and distressing…He did away with it. It is no longer part of us, it is behind us. In Jesus God made the day break after the long night and spring come after the long winter.”

The women come to the tomb while it was still dark, they can’t sleep. Mary is standing outside. “Why are you weeping?”, she is asked. Her response is practical: “if you have taken the body away, tell me where it is!” Why is she weeping? Why would we be weeping? We weep because we grieve a loss: Loss of hope in a secure future that we had imagined? Loss of hope because our sin seems to have permanently enslaved us? Into the loss, into the darkness, into the grief and guilt, there is an intervention. In the Psalm, God intervenes. “You have drawn me up”, Psalm 30. 1; “You have healed me”, Psalm 30. 2; “You have brought up my soul from Sheol..you have restored me to life”, Psalm 30. 3.

And so the intervention prompts a second question. We move from “What keeps you up at night?,” to “What brings you joy?” The Psalm gives us a vivid picture of this transformation: You have turned our mourning into dancing. I will confess here that I am a terrible dancer, and my wife---and we have been married for many years---knows this. It was so when we met. I could square dance a little, but she would quickly say, “that’s not dancing!” She was a girl from the Carolinas, I was from Georgia. In Georgia they have never heard of shagging, and God did not give me the natural abilities to learn how to do it.

If mourning is about death, dancing is about life (we dance at weddings, in hopes of yet another generation to come). You have turned our mourning into dancing. In reading this psalm and planning for this day, the image that kept coming to mind was our Winter Wonderland dance, and everyone, and included in that number the Joy Class, out there dancing in Charter Hall.

A member of our church had come to me with the idea for that evening: “Could we have a dance?” “Yes,” I said. “Do you really think it would be ok?” “Yes, it will be ok.” “It will be a real dance, are you sure? “It will be great.”Where did we get the idea that dancing was not appropriate in church? You have turned our mourning into dancing. A friend reminded me of a wonderful insight of G. K. Chesterton: “The essential difference between the medieval and modern worlds is that “the medievals envisioned life as a great dance, whereas we envision it as a mad race.”

You have taken off my sackcloth, and clothed me with joy.

Joy. And so, if I asked you the question, “what keeps you up at night?”, it is also fair enough to ask a second question: “what brings you joy?” What brings me joy? Our daughters’ celebrating a national championship in basketball. Sharing a chili dinner with the homeless. Listening to that viola last Sunday. The anticipation of a few days in the mountains this spring and summer, and seeing the Braves, once or twice. Cooking out on a grill with friends. The sheer joy of watching the Joy Class dance on that winter evening. I could go on…

Mostly, what brings me joy is the promise of the Easter Gospel, which is the word after the last word on the cross, the word spoken from the throne in the Revelation to John, the promise that “God will wipe away every tear, that death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the one who is seated on the throne says, “Behold, I make all things new (21. 4-5).

This brings me joy. Flannery O’ Connor was right. I am sometimes hard of hearing, and at other times I am almost blind. I need the choir to shout it all out for me! And I need an unmistakable sign: a rainbow, maybe, or an empty tomb and a risen Lord! In disorienting times, we need ears to hear and eyes to see. What brings you joy? We think we have heard the last word. Like Saul, we think our rebellion against God is the last word, but there is the Risen Christ: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Like Peter, we think our betrayal is the last word, but there is the Risen Christ: “Peter, do you love me?” Like Mary, we think our grief is the last word, but there is the risen Christ, speaking her name: “Mary.”

We think we have heard the last word: weeping may linger for a night. But there is a word after that: Joy comes in the morning. Brothers and sisters, believe the Good News. It is no longer the middle of the night, thank God.

The Lord is risen. The Lord is risen indeed!

Morning has broken!

*Thanks to Ben Witherington and Ralph Wood who read this sermon prior to my preaching, and to Bishop Grant Hagiya for his devotional on Psalm 30 at the Ministry Study Commission in March.