Misplaced Attention

In this week’s issue of “Newsweek,” Anglican bishop N. T. Wright, also a well respected, fairly conservative theologian, was interviewed. He’s written a new book about the resurrection. But that’s not why I’m bringing this up. In June, Anglican bishops from around the world will meet in England for the once each decade Lambeth Conference. High on the agenda is the issue of sex. Lots of POed bishops around the world want to whack the Episcopal Church for its actions in 2003.

“Newsweek” asked the bishop what he thought would happen at Lambeth. It’s his answer to that question that interested me most. He said, “I think it’s going to be messy. It’s not clear quite what the Lambeth Conference could say, that will make things more sharply focused, more wholesome…At the same time, I wish we could prioritize so that we were actually talking about issues of global justice and debt remission and global warming and so on. I mean, there’s something very bizarre about the rich arguing about sex while the poor clamor for justice.”

There you have it. The last sentence pretty much sums up for me the stupidity of the whole debate and the continued tendency of the Church to miss the entire point of its purpose.

I’m reminded of Amos who said:
“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them
…Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” [5:21-24]

Amos wrote in the 8th century B.C.E. I guess religious folks are slow learners.

Peace,

Jerry+

Baby Birds

I've entered the 21st century--I bought a digital camera. Here's the first picture I took. Remember the baby birds for a couple of posts ago? Here they are!

Any day now I expect to see them getting ready to try flying. I know momma bird will be glad; she's probably ready to just hunt food for herself. I'll keep you posted.

Peace,

Jerry+

The Higher Way

Sunday’s Epistle is 1 Peter 3:13-22. When 1 Peter was written toward the end of the first century, bad things were happening to good people. Today’s reading, like the whole of the letter, confronts the reality that Christians will experience pain and suffering at the hands of others, that just people will be treated unjustly. In my most cynical moments, when I see bad things happening to good people, I like to quote a saying I picked up somewhere years ago: “No good deed goes unpunished.” It’s not true, of course, but in those moments, it seems to have a ring of truth to it.

The first readers of this letter were good people, Christians, who because of their conversion to the faith, had separated themselves from the rest of society. To be a Christian in those days would mean you wouldn’t be making sacrifices to a variety of gods and you wouldn’t celebrate the pagan festivals with your neighbors. You would stand out in the community. And that’s usually not such a good thing. What was true then and seems always to be true in life is, if you are different from the rest of us, you’re dangerous. And, it seems to follow, if you’re dangerous, you’ve got to be punished in some way. So bad things were happening to Christians.

The bad things I’m referring to are not the organized persecutions we’ve all heard so much about. That largely lay in the future. From the tone of the letter, the bad things were happening at a much more personal level. A neighbor who won’t talk with you because you don’t believe as she does. A seller in the marketplace who won’t sell to you because you don’t follow the gods he follows. A teenager from down the street who hits you in the back with a dirt clod because he’s been told you’re not to be trusted. These are the kinds of things that were going on for those who were followers of the Way.

The most natural thing in the world when faced with behaviors such as these is to give as good as you get. What couples in therapy often describe as “a taste of his/her own medicine.” It is in response to that natural tendency that Peter’s words for today are written. Like Jesus before him, he calls his brothers and sisters in Christ to a different standard.

Peter sets out to define what behaviors ought to be normal in a Christian’s interactions with each other in the community and with their non-Christian neighbors. Be compassionate. Love one another, he says. Be tenderhearted. Be humble, in the sense of be disciplined in following higher principles. Don’t repay evil and meanness with more evil and more meanness; instead, as Jesus before him had said, repay evil with good.

Well, sure. While these injunctions or imperatives may have been news to Peter’s readers, they aren’t news to us. We know this is exactly how we are to act. But one of my most difficult tasks is how to live up to this standard. I know from experience, I’m not alone in this. So, for me, the question of the day is, how can we follow Jesus and Peter and the other saints in this higher way, when the going gets painful and rough?

Peace

Jerry+

A Robin Outside My Door

Just outside my side door, on top of an electrical box, a robin has built a nest. It seems to me a strange place. Nothing really to anchor it to, it just sits on top of the metal box. We use this door a fair amount and each time we open it, the robin flies off in fear, protecting her eggs. For a week, if we even approached the door, which is a French door, seeing us she would fly away, but now she has grown somewhat calmer. The other day when I was doing yard work and walking up and down the drive, it must have made her very nervous, flying out of the next so often I began to worry if the eggs were getting enough of her warm body.

A few days later, my fears proved to be unfounded. I saw a tiny open beak peeking above the rim of the nest as the robin dropped something into it. After watching through the door, I decided to get a closer view. So I got a ladder—and a camera—and climbed up to take a look. I expected to see one, maybe two, tiny birds. I was shocked to see four! I took a picture, but since we use wet process, you don’t get to see these tiny downy creatures who could barely hold themselves upright.

I marvel at the robin’s endurance as she makes scores of trips away from and back to the nest every day. She has mouths to feed and she appears to be doing it alone. I have seen a bigger and fatter robin around—maybe the other parent. But I haven’t noticed it bringing food. I marvel too at the care of the mother robin who, yesterday during a threatening storm, sat on her babies to protect them from wind and rain.

The entire experience has been very touching for me. I walk to the door multiple times a day to check on her and them. I find I’m worried that one of the little ones may end up on the driveway as it starts to grow and experiment. But I also find the experience a kind of metaphor for my own situation. This is week three of retirement. Week three of a new phase of life. Week three of some uncertainty about metaphorical wind and rain. But also week three of hope and excitement. Soon, the little robins will be trying out their wings and not long afterwards, flying off to a new life. I can identify.

Peace,

Jerry+

Dwelling

Sunday’s Gospel is a passage from John that is often read at the Burial Office. Jesus’ comments about mansions is offered as consolation for those who mourn. It reminds them that death isn’t the end, but that something else awaits.

But, Robert Gundry, a theologian, suggests that Jesus’ comment about many mansions isn’t about” rooms up in heaven.” For Gundry, the crucial clue is that Jesus never promises that upon his return he will take the disciples away to the dwellings. What he did promise was that “Where I am, you will be also.” I think he’s on to something. The point of the saying really ends up being how God makes a home with us. The passage isn’t about mansions in the sky, but about the spiritual relationship we have with Christ. “I am the vine, you are the branches” he says to his friends. You dwell in me. It’s not about some future dwelling—it’s about where we dwell now.

More important for John than up-ness is the in-ness and one-ness Jesus wants us to experience already with God—the same in-ness and oneness that Jesus experienced with God. This passage’s focus is on the rich relationship of mutual in-dwelling that is eternal life already begun for us. God dwells with us now in the mystical communion through the Spirit and we dwell in God.

In Homing in the Presence, Gerhard Frost tells this story. “One day as I walked down the airport ramp to board a plane, a family of four was in front of me. The older child appeared to be about four and her every step was a bounce. She radiated expectancy and joy. Her father looked down at her and asked, “Where are we going?” “To Grandma’s!” she shouted. She didn’t say Jackson or Nashville or Atlanta, but to Grandma’s. As far as she was concerned, she was going to a person—the place didn’t matter. She was an eloquent witness to the fact that we home in on those who love us, in people more than places.”

So too with the many rooms of John 14. What matters is not where the rooms are geographically, but whose rooms they are. “We are going to God’s.” Our home is with God, John tells us. The passage is about assurance that Jesus has made it possible for us to be with God. At least that’s how I see it.

Peace

Jerry+

Devoted?

In the Lectionary the fourth Sunday of Easter, we find these words written by Luke in his history of the early Church, better known as Acts. “Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers.” [Acts 2:42] In the Episcopal Church, this sentence is included as one of the baptismal promises by beginning with, “Will you devote yourself…” And I suspect there is no Christian group that would object to a similar question for their baptismal candidates.

With statistics telling us that church attendance is declining throughout the country and across all denominational lines, you have to ask yourself how many people think this model of Christian behavior applies to them? The key word in this sentence is “devoted.” They devoted themselves. Yet, it seems very many of us today devote ourselves to our favorite sports team, or to a Sunday game of golf with our buds, or maybe a family getaway to the cabin. All good things, but perhaps not the things we should be devoting ourselves to.

When church-going becomes optional, what is lost is the opportunity to learn more about what our faith calls us to, to be with others who are struggling to grow in grace and in harmony with others, to the importance of the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, and, of course, to praying. That’s a lot to lose.

What it amounts to is by staying away, by devoting ourselves to other things, these actions become a symbol of our belief that we are self-sufficient and self-important. Not even Jesus believed that.

Peace,

Jerry+

The Road FROM Emmaus

The Gospel reading Sunday was the familiar story of the resurrection appearance of Jesus to Cleopas and his unnamed friend as they traveled from Jerusalem to Emmaus. This appearance took place on the day of the resurrection, but late in the afternoon. Apparently, Cleopas and his friend were the first to see Jesus after he appeared to Mary that morning.

It’s a wonderful story . Jesus appears on the road on which they travel and asks what they two men are talking about . They’re astonished that he doesn’t know what been happening. We’re astonished that they don’t recognize him. They catch him up, including the rumor that Jesus has risen. But they are unable to make the connection that this is Jesus to whom they are talking. Later, they will reflect on the discussion that takes place between Jesus and them and realize that something was registering as their “hearts burned” within them. But it was vague.

When they arrive home, it’s late afternoon and they implore Jesus to join them. It’s not safe to be traveling alone. He stays and when he breaks the bread at the meal they realize it is the risen Lord. All this is neat, but it’s what they do next that is most important.

Even though it is seven miles back to Jerusalem and they are bound to be tired having just made that trip, and even though it is going to be dark before they can make it back to Jerusalem and dangerous, they head out immediately to tell the others.

Even though they are tired and even though there is danger involved, they can’t keep the news to themselves. To not put to fine a point on it, that is exactly to what we are called. Even though we grow tired physically or emotionally or are just caught up in our stuff, and even though we may be ignored or ridiculed, we need to be telling others about Jesus. The Jesus that is being proclaimed by so many today seems to have lost his loving, inclusive, and open nature. If we know a different Lord, we need to get the word out, even though we’ll be looked at as some “evangelist” from the fringe. I’d prefer to believe that proclaiming a Lord of love and patience, a Lord of forgiveness and mercy, a Lord of inclusion is the normal description of this man we love.

If those of us who think this way are silent, should we wonder than Christianity is becoming increasingly an irrelevant minority?

Peace,

Jerry+

Out of Touch?

"According to Chief of Police of Waycross, Ga., Tony Tanner, on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 a group of third-graders plotted to attack their teacher, bringing a broken steak knife, handcuffs, duct tape and other items for the job and assigning children tasks including covering the windows and cleaning up afterward…The plot by as many as nine boys and girls at Center Elementary School in south Georgia was a serious threat, the chief said."

My first reaction was, “April Fool!” But it turns out to be no joke. Let’s see: when I was in the third grade and about 8 years old, my “plots” tended to center around how to smuggle a water pistol into school so my buds and I could get soaked at recess. I think that year I had two or three taken away—never to be returned, by the way. Or how to get excused from a boring class by claiming I needed to go to the restroom. Though, technically, it wasn’t a plot because it involved no one but me. And I remember at recess one day jumping on my friend Eddie’s back while horsing around. Unfortunately for me, he had a pencil in his back pocket and I got jabbed in the leg with its point. The lead tip that broke off didn’t come out until I was in my thirties.

All sounds amazingly innocent and boring, right? Yet, today we have kids the same age developing a pretty well thought out plan about how to take out a teacher. Frankly, I’m astounded. I’m speechless. How did this happen? Where did the idea come from? [Duh, Jerry, ever watch TV?] Where did the handcuffs they were caught with come from? Were there parents completely clueless? Will a follow up story tell us the parents were enraged that the school called the police? Will they be suing the school and the city for false arrest? And what happened to innocent fun? What ever happened to the old thumbtack in the chair trick? Whatever happened to parents who don’t take their kids’ side when the kids are obviously in the wrong?

I know I must sound like some old out of touch coot, but I can’t help but ask what our culture is coming to when 8 and 9 year olds want to attack and kill their teacher and go so far as to gather the equipment and develop a plan to do it.

Can there be any peace when this is what our world is like?

Jerry+

Forty Years

There are some moments that are burned into our memories. Some are happy moments, others are moments of fear, and some are moments of despair.

Forty years ago I had driven to Memphis from a little community outside Nashville where I was a pastor. I was still at Vanderbilt working on my Master of Divinity. We had come to Memphis to visit my in-laws—I don’t remember why. Perhaps it was nothing special.

I was tired, as I often was in those days of daily 30 mile commutes, classes, second job and being a pastor. That afternoon found me in the master bedroom lying on the bed, listening to the radio and dozing. And then the announcement came. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been gunned down. I was still struggling with my southern upbringing, but was making progress in dealing with my naturally acquired racism. And, to be honest, there were times not too many years previous when my thoughts about Dr. King were anything but warm.

But in this moment, I began to cry. I cried because a husband and father , friend of many and a leader’s life had been snuffed out. “Not again,” was one of my thoughts, remember a November day not too many years earlier. And I cried because I knew in that moment, my beloved city would never be the same. That relations between my race and African Americans would probably never recover from this act.

Forty years later, I’m saddened to say, my worst fears have been realized. Oh, sure, “progress” has been made, but the U.S. is still a racist nation and Memphis is a city routinely divided and polarized along racial lines, no matter what the issue might be.

We have miles to go before we sleep and miles to go before Dr. King’s dream even approaches actualization. I will not live to see it, of that I’m certain. And today, I feel tears coming again.
Peace,
Jerry+