From Impossible to “I’m Possible” with Jesus and Aristotle

    About 400 years before Jesus, Plato taught the world about perfection in his Philosophy of Forms. According to Plato, everything in existence was just a shadowy representation of a higher perfect form, like shadows on a cave wall represent the objects casting the image from the fire light. For everything there is a higher perfect form. The chair you are sitting in is merely a representation of a perfect chair. A horse is a representation of a perfect horse. Everything in existence has a higher perfect form.
   Some 400 years later, when Jesus was born, Plato’s ideas of perfection were still the dominant philosophy. God was perfect, righteous, holy, sinless, without flaw. Humanity was a dung heap compared to God. However, among life in the poop pile, some were less putrid than others. The religious in Jesus’ day saw themselves as far from perfect, but in comparison, far more perfect than your regular run of the mill sinner. They were confident if the people of the world would all try and be more like them, the world would be a better place. In order to help others, they were glad to point out all the areas in which people had fallen short from the glory of God’s perfect plan.
   Today, The Platonic Model of Perfection is still followed religiously with each church believing that even though we are all sinners, some are just a little less sinful than others. In order to be helpful, like the other Platonic Perfectionists that have come before us, we don’t begin by validating other people as beloved, we begin by invalidating others as far from perfect. We consider that the best way to be helpful.
   The Platonic Model of Perfection is also primary in education, from the primary grades on up. If you take a test and answer 100 questions and answer accurately on 97 of them, your paper may be returned to you with a red, -3.  Even if your test has a 97 on it, if asked, “How did you do?” you will likely answer, “I missed 3.” Plato would be proud. We learn to grade ourselves on just how far from perfection we are always seeking that perfect Platonic form.
   There is an alternative. For example, I heard of a teacher who started marking her tests differently. She got rid of her red marker. She put the number answered correctly on the paper. For a child who only got three correct, she put a 3 and a smiley face. The child asked her, “Why did you put a smiley face on my paper?”
   She replied, “Because you got 3 right. If you got three, then you can get the rest.”
   She was not saying, “There is no goal, no scale, no measuring.” What she is saying is, “Let’s celebrate potential. You got three correct, that means you are capable of getting more.”
   Rather than showing what the child could not do, she pointed the child toward potential. Billy, in this next story needed a teacher like her, and parents, and pastors, and…
  

   A teacher asked her third grade class, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
   She got the standard answers, “Fireman. Doctor. Astronaut.”
   Then she asked the only child who had no response, “Billy, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
   Billy replied, “Possible.”
   She did not understand, “Possible? What do you mean?”
   He replied, “Everybody is always telling me, ‘Billy, you’re impossible. When I grow up, I want to be possible.”
  
   Possibility or Potential is a contrasting model to Platonic Perfection and dates back to the same era as Plato. Plato had a student named, Aristotle. When Plato died, Aristotle was hoping to be appointed to Plato’s position as a tenured professor of philosophy. When he didn’t get the job, dejected, he left the city and went out into the forest to rethink his life. While he was out in the woods, he touched a tree.
   Touching something alive, Aristotle thought how limited Plato’s idea of ‘perfection’ was when it came to living things. What worked well in the classroom had little application with living things. What relevance did perfection have to do with trees, shrubs, flowers, birds, deer, or people?There was no ‘perfect’ form for anything alive. Living things come in so many varieties there can be no perfect form as each has a particularly unique and distinctive form of its own. Instead of perfection, Aristotle focused on ‘potential’. He used the word, telos. In an acorn is the telos of an oak tree. In atadpole is the telos of a frog. In a kitten is the telos of a cat. In a baby is the telos of an adult.    To the frustration of Jesus’ adversaries, he was a telos man. He looked at people as alive, not in some silly less than perfect ranking system. Jesus saw people as distinct individuals, alive and beautiful, each in his or her own way. While the religiously right saw many people as irredeemably imperfect and shouted, “Shame! Shame!” he saw potential in each person regardless of his or her imperfections or their past. Jesus called to all the individuals who could hear him during the Sermon on the Mount,
  
   Each of you is the salt of the earth. If salt has no flavor, can you make it salty again? No. It’s purpose is to give flavor to food or else it is thrown out.
   Each of you is the light of the world. When people get together and build a city, they do not hide it in a valley but put it on a hill so others can come to it. In the same way, why would anyone light a candle or a lamp and put it under a bucket? No, you put it on the table so that it gives light to all the house.
   So let it be with you. Let your light shine so that others may see the wonder of what you do and give glory
  

  Jesus’ call was not to consider in shame what we are not, but to find our potentialand live it out. Each of us is to find our flavor and share it. Each of us is to find our light and shine it. Each of us is to take whatever we have and set it on a hill for all to enjoy! Each of us must move from seeing ourselves as “impossible” to proclaiming, “I’m possible!” and living out our God-given telos.

  If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility! Soren Kierkegaard

Too Much Stuff? Then Give Your Gifts…

   Here is how I feel about stuff… I like stuff. According to George Carlin, accumulating and acquiring stuff is our national pastime.

   …that’s what this country is all about. Tryin’ to get more stuff. Stuff you don’t want, stuff you don’t need, stuff that’s poorly made, stuff that’s overpriced. Even stuff you can’t afford! Gotta keep on gettin’ more stuff. Otherwise someone else might wind up with more stuff. Can’t let that happen. Gotta have the most stuff

   Carlin is right. I like stuff, but stuff is like cookie dough, too much and you’re going to toss it!
   If you feel like you’ve got too much stuff, if chasing that one more thing has ruined your paradise like it did Adam and Eve, then try giving away your gifts. Next birthday, anniversary, sweetheart’s day (Feb. 14), completion day (like graduation or retirement) or holiday (like Christmas or Groundhog Day), try donating your gift to someone else. Here is how:

Donate Your Anniversary to Buy Someone Else Something They Need
Through Your Church or Favorite Nonprofit

   Al and Carolyn Baumgartner celebrated their 60th anniversary and collected all their gifts through their church to raise enough money to buy every child at nearby Compton Elementary School a new Scholastic book. They were going to have the party. They were going to receive gifts. Because they decided to share by giving a gift someone needed instead of just accumulating more stuff a whole school celebrated their anniversary as they celebrated every student in the school.

Donate Your Birthday through Your Favorite Nonprofit

Cathie Newell donated her birthday and raised enough money to pay a teacher in Haiti for five months through Haiti for the World.

Celebrate Your Graduation by Helping a School Stay Open

Cayla and Abbie Jones donated their graduations (Cayla from Berry College and Abbie from Hillgrove High School) and raised enough money to fund the salaries of two teachers in Haiti for an entire year through Haiti for the World.

Celebrate Someone You Appreciate
Why Wait Until Mother’s Day, Secretary’s Day,
or Teacher Appreciation Day?

Donate your gifts to your favorite nonprofit today gift today in honor or memory of someone who is more important to you than anything you can buy. For more information, contact your favorite mission group or go to: Haiti for the World: How to Donate With your donation, make sure you fill in the “In honor of” section.

Set Up Your Own Fundraiser on Facebook for Your Favorite Nonprofit

   Most nonprofits have a “fundraiser” link on the left side of the nonprofit’s Facebook page to help you create your own fundraiser and let people know about the causes you care about. Carrie Jones gave her birthday and raised $700 for teachers in Haiti through Facebook and David Jones was feeling thankful at Thanksgiving and facilitated others thanksgivings on Facebook for teacher’s in Haiti and raised $600. To see how you can celebrate your own causes with your Facebook friends, click here for examples: Facebook Fundraisers.

   You don’t have to wait to Thanksgiving to be thankful. Give your gift, donate your presents, share your presence and show someone you care for them by caring for others. For more information, use the contact form below…

 

 

 

James Taylor and The Wise Men – Home by Another Way

Today is Epiphany, when the Magi came to the end of their journey following the star and encountered Christ in a poor home in Bethlehem. To have been on such a journey, to have been surprised by God in such an unexpected way, they had to be changed. James Taylor tells the story of their transformation in Home by Another Way

Those magic men the Magi, some people call them wise or Oriental, even kings.
Well anyway, those guys, they visited with Jesus, they sure enjoyed their stay.
Then warned in a dream of King Herod’s scheme, they went home by another way.
Yes, they went home by another way, home by another way.
Maybe me and you can be wise guys too and go home by another way.
We can make it another way, safe home as they used to say.
Keep a weather eye to the chart on high and go home another way.
Continue reading “James Taylor and The Wise Men – Home by Another Way”

New Year’s Resolution – Resolve to Pay Attention

   Sophia was asked to speak to the students of a local medical school.
   “Sophia, what do we need to be better doctors?” the students asked.
   “Doctors,” Sophia said, “need strong stomachs and strong powers of observation.” Then she opened a canister. The putrid smell quickly moved through the classroom. Sophia stuck a finger in the jar, pulled it up, and then licked it. She passed the jar around encouraging each doctor in training to do the same. Each did, and though many felt nauseas, no one got sick.
   “You all have very strong stomachs,” she said. “But your powers of observation need some work.”
   “What do you mean?” they asked. “We did just what you did.”
   “There is one difference,” she replied. “The finger I dipped in the jar was not the finger I licked.”

Caretake this moment. Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed. Quit evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now. Epictetus

Let There Be Peace on Earth, and Let it Begin with…

Many go to war in the name of peace.
Many act criminally in the name of justice.
Many lie in the name of the truth.
Many dominate others in the name of freedom.
Many wrongdoings are committed in the name of righteousness.
Many acts of hate are done in the name of love.

To walk in The Way,
   focus less on the name and more on the ways
   of peace, justice, truth, freedom,
   righteousness, and love.
   That is The Way.

Can hate produce love?
   Can war bring peace?
   Can domination promote freedom?
   Can evil foster good?
   No more than manure can give the aroma of a rose
   or a canary can give birth to a cow.

Master’s Hand

Of God’s love we can say two things: it is poured out universally for everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet; and secondly, God’s love doesn’t seek value, it creates value. It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement. William Sloane Coffin

   As “Music City,” Nashville draws musicians from all over the country. There are so many talented musicians in Nashville that when asked if I play the guitar, I always say, “No.” Playing a guitar means something different in Nashville than in my home state of South Carolina.
   I’ve been fortunate to watch Bob Britt play the guitar in many venues on many occasions for the almost fifteen years of our friendship. When I saw Bob play with John Fogerty at The Ryman, I watched Tom Spaulding, his guitar tech, bring him guitar, after guitar, after guitar. Tom brought so many instruments out for the different songs I commented to Carrie there was nothing left for Tom to bring other than a chair to see if Bob could play it. Tom would later say of Bob in contrast to other premier guitar players, “Bob has a way of seeing the whole and finding his place on stage making room for himself and making the music better at the same time.”
Having watched Bob for so many years, from a distance and up close, I finally figured out what amazes me most about him. There are many great guitar players who have created their own particularly distinct and recognizable sounds like B.B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughn, or Eddie Van Halen. Bob does something even more miraculous. At one particular Moment Service, Bob took out his guitar for the night, a Stella he had purchased for fifteen dollars at a Good Will. With a slide and pic, he brought out not Bob’s sound from the guitar, but the guitar’s sound. The Stella sounded cheap and tinny when I touched it resonated with life at Bob’s touch. In his hands, the Stella reached its full potential. Watching Bob, I remembered this poem by Myra Brooks Welch, The Touch of the Master’s Hand,

Twas battered and scarred and the auctioneer
Thought it scarcely worth his while
To waste much time on the old violin,

But he held it up with a smile.

“What am I bid, good folk?” he cried.
“Who’ll start the bidding for me?
A dollar, a dollar … now two … only two …
Two dollars, and who’ll make it three?

“Three dollars once, three dollars twice,
Going for three” … but no!
From the room far back a gray-haired man

Came forward and picked up the bow.

Then wiping the dust from the old violin
And tightening up the strings,
He played a melody pure and sweet,
As sweet as an angel sings.

The music ceased, and the auctioneer,
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said, “What am I bid for the old violin?”
As he held it up with the bow.

“A thousand dollars … and who’ll make it two?
Two…two thousand, and who’ll make it three?
Three thousand once and three thousand twice …
Three thousand and gone!” said he.

The people cheered, but some exclaimed
“We do not quite understand …
What changed it’s worth?” and the answer came:
‘Twas the touch of the master’s hand.”

And many a man with soul out of tune
And battered and scarred by sin
Is auctioned cheap by the thoughtless crowd
Just like the old violin.

But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd
Never can quite understand
The worth of a soul, and the change that is wrought
By the touch of the master’s hand.

O Master! I am the tuneless one
Lay, lay Thy hand on me,
Transform me now, put a song in my heart
Of melody, Lord, to Thee!

   The author of this poem, Myra Brooks Welch, was born into a family of musicians, though she loved music and playing the organ, she was limited by debilitating arthritis and a condition which confined her to a wheelchair. Unable to play music, she put her creative energy into writing poetry. Her friends called her, “The poet with the singing soul.” She typed her poetry with two pencils, one grasped in each hand, using the erasers to hit the keys.
Many in Nashville rate a guitarist by the expensive nature of the instrument they play, some with even a model named after them. For those who look close enough, we can see the true masters of the art who can bring life from whatever instrument they touch. So, too, with human life, God is the master who can bring out our potential making us priceless.
   When your mind is still, when you are in the present moment free from past valuations or devaluations, be with God, seek out the touch of the master’s hand in your life. Pray this practice opening yourself to the touch of God using Frances Ridley Havergal’s hymn, Take My Life.

Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to Thee.
Take my moments and my days let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take myself and I will be ever only all for Thee.

(For more on Bob Britt, check out the following videos…)

 

 

Marriage is Like Football

As college football kicks off this weekend, I am reminded of my wisest counsel to young couples about to get married, “You marriage will be like football.” 

(Adapted from Jesus Zens You.)

   “Do you, Roger, take this woman to be your wife?”
   “I do.”
   “And do you, Rebecca, take this man to be your husband?”
   “I do.”
   “By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you man and wife. Let the games begin.”

   I try and prepare them, those innocent young who come to the church to be married. I try to give them some picture that they have not only chosen each other, they have been chosen by their families, chosen as missionaries, as agents, as representatives. I try to show them how, in their lives up to this point, their families have been preparing them, educating them, training them in the ‘right’ way to live their family way, their long traditioned, heavily patterned, family way, sending them forth into marriage, to procreate a new family, one with the same values, behaviors, traditions, patterns of the family from whence they came.
   I try to prepare individuals who come to me for premarital counseling for the upcoming mêlée. I ask them, “What do you think your marriage will be like?”
   I listen to their responses, then I add, “I like to think of marriage as one really long…football game.”
   Comparing marriage to football is no insult. I come from the South where football is sacred. I would never belittle marriage by saying it is like soccer, bowling, or playing bridge, never. Those images would never work as only football is passionate enough to be compared to marriage. In other sports, players walk onto the field, in football they run onto the field, in high school ripping through some paper, in college (for those who are fortunate enough) they touch the rock and run down the hill onto the field in the middle of the band. In other sports, fans cheer, in football they scream. In other sports, players ‘high five’, in football they chest, smash shoulder pads, and pat your rear. Football is a passionate sport, and marriage is about passion.
   In football, two teams send players onto the field to determine which athletes will win and which will lose, in marriage two families send their representatives forward to see which family will survive and which family will be lost into oblivion with their traditions, patterns, and values lost and forgotten.
   Preparing for this struggle for survival, the bride and groom are each set up. Each has been led to believe that their family’s patterns are all ‘normal,’ and anyone who differs is dense, naïve, or stupid because, no matter what the issue, the way their family has always done it is the ‘right’ way. For the premarital bride and groom in their twenties, as soon as they say, “I do,” these ‘right’ ways of doing things are about to collide like two three hundred and fifty pound linemen at the hiking of the ball. From “I do” forward, if not before, every decision, every action, every goal will be like the line of scrimmage.

Where will the family patterns collide?
   In the kitchen. Here the new couple will be faced with the difficult decision of “Where do the cereal bowls go?” Likely, one family’s is high, and the others is low.
   In the bathroom. The bathroom is a battleground unmatched in the potential conflicts. Will the toilet paper roll over the top or underneath? Will the acceptable residing position for the lid be up or down? And, of course, what about the toothpaste? Squeeze it from the middle or the end?
   The skirmishes don’t stop in the rooms of the house, they are not only locational they are seasonal. The classic battles come home for the holidays.
   Thanksgiving. Which family will they spend the noon meal with and which family, if close enough, will have to wait until the nighttime meal, or just dessert if at all?
   Christmas. Whose home will they visit first, if at all? How much money will they spend on gifts for his family? for hers?
   Then comes for many couples an even bigger challenge – children of their own!
   At the wedding, many couples take two candles and light just one often extinguishing their candle as a sign of devotion. The image is Biblical. The Bible is quoted a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. The unanswered question is, “If the two shall become one, which one?” Two families, two patterns, two ways of doing things, but which family’s patterns will survive to play another day, in another generation, and which will be lost forever? Let the games begin.

The White Trash Cafe Secret for Church Growth

The White Trash Café was one of the most colorful restaurants in Nashville. I went because someone invited me. A pastor from a church not far from there, but not too near either, invited me along with the rest of our minister’s group. The inside was almost as flamboyant as the out as the wallpaper was a mishmash of old album covers ranging from Andre Crouch to the Rolling Stones. Our server looked like he’d just come from living off the street and so did the owner.

We must have given ourselves away as a group of ministers. It was either our professional attire, our praying before the meal, or our over use of profanity during it that signaled we were clergy. You get a group of ministers together, confident that none of our congregants are around, and we can throw around more bad language than late-night HBO special just to prove that we can.

“How was your food?” the owner of the restaurant asked us.

“Good,” we all agreed. It was, though secretly I was hoping I would be able to say the same again in a couple of hours. It was the greasy food I love to have but that often has me for the rest of the day.

“How would you like to see Jesus?” he asked.

We didn’t know what to say. I wanted to explain to him that we were ministers, employed by churches, paid by congregations, so there was no way we wanted to actually see Jesus. We had master’s degrees in Christianity, were taught by professors and thought of ourselves as being like professors, tenured. We considered ourselves to be like Jesus’ disciples, though not Peter for he tried to walk on water. We thought of ourselves as similar to the other eleven, who, while Peter tried to walk on water, watched, and then when everyone was safe back in the boat, Peter and Jesus included, those disciples professed how amazing Jesus they was and that he surely must be the Son of God. As Professional Christians, we were more than happy to talk about Jesus, from a distance, but we had studied enough about Jesus to know just how dangerous Jesus could be. We were fine with seeing Jesus, but anytime you saw Jesus, whether in the Bible or 2,000 years since, there is a high likelihood that Jesus might see you. Once Jesus sees you, and says, “Follow me,” then life as you know it, as you worked for it, is probably over. Better to watch from a distance, stay in the boat, and if you can’t work it out, get paid for it. That’s our unspoken contract with our congregations. Keep church to an hour, go over an hour and Jesus might find you. So, get in. Pray. Get out, with a blessing. See Jesus? Sure. Can we get a guarantee he won’t see us?

Neither wanting to be like Peter trying to walk on water or denying him when confronted, we followed our restaurateur guide across the dining toward the restrooms and beyond toward the janitor’s closet. Before our host showed us Jesus, he held up a picture of Christ on the cross and asked us to look at it. We did. Then he slowly pulled it away like a curtain on The Price is Right, revealing what we’d won. There he was, above the mop bucket and mop, in the window. Just like the picture. Jesus on the cross.

smwhitetrashjesus.jpg

http://media2.fdncms.com/nashville/imager/cafe-christ/u/original/1482404/smwhitetrashjesus.jpg

Now, whether or not you see Jesus in that bit of algae between two sheets of Plexiglass is up to you. Going to the restaurant two or three times and looking at a picture of a painting of the crucifixion right before you look at it does seem to aid nonbelievers in seeing the light, or seeing Jesus through the light. Whether or not this is an act of God, consequence of nature, or both, again, I leave up to you. What I have observed in my life is that too often I suffer from not seeing Jesus in the usual places than from seeing him in the unusual ones which leads me to the answer for the most popular question asked by churches and ministers, “How do we grow?” or, said another way, “How do we get people to come?”

The answer is in what I’m calling, The Parable of The White Trash Café. I went to the White Trash Café because someone invited me. Colorful though it was, I would have never gone in unless someone invited me, albeit it, dared me to go. Without that connection, I would have never gone. The second lesson of The Parable of The White Trash Café is this, I saw Jesus in the window because somebody showed him to me. It’s not a very complicated parable or a complicated solution to a painful problem throughout congregations across the country.

As churches, if you want to grow, follow the lesson of The White Trash Café. If you want to grow:

  1. Invite others.
  2. Show them Jesus.

Will you grow if you invite others to come and show them Jesus? Likely not. Jesus’ way in the Gospels is not magic but miraculous. Jesus’ way in the world also had him living in relative poverty and got him killed. If that’s what happened to Jesus, why do we think showing people Jesus will pay off our personal or congregational mortgages? Inviting others and showing them Jesus may or may not ease our congregational woes or even provide our pastoral pensions, but if we don’t do those two things, then likely we stopped being churches a long time ago. It’s not magical, it may or not be miraculous, and it may even at times be less interesting that algae between two window panes, regardless, it has and will always be, our calling. Invite others. Show them Jesus.

Sad to say, The White Trash Café closed, so, I guess it is up to the churches now. God help us.

Church: Where Did All the People Go?

As a child, many of us were taught, “Here’s the church and here’s the steeple, open the door and where are all the people?”

Opening our hands with fingers in to symbolize a full church was the goal while an empty church was a sad church, at least that’s what I was taught. However, through the years, I can’t help but think of the Great Commission in Matthew 28, “Go into all the world…” the end result of the church was intended to be more than a full building.
Here’s a different perspective that might give your church a different view of our core calling…

Jesus said, “Go…”

Claim Your Worth in The World

1 John 3:1 See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.   

My friend, Etta Britt, tells a wonderful story of how she claimed her worth in a high school world that challenged her value on a regular basis. The story is from her book Backroads and Spotlights,

   We had PE, physical education classes back then as well. We had to “dress out” everyday. It was a lovely outfit. Blue shorts, a gray t-shirt, tall athletic socks, and tennis shoes. I enjoyed it though. We got to climb ropes, jump on trampolines, walk on the balance beams, and do calisthenics.   After class, all the girls would go to our locker room to change. I would start playing the schools fight song on the lockers as if they were a set of drums. The girls would join in and we’d sing at the top of our lungs. There was one group of girls that didn’t care for me though. I don’t know what I did to make them hate me. Maybe it was because I loved to sing and dance and laugh a lot and that got on their nerves. Maybe I was just annoying. One day I got wind that they were plotting to embarrass me. They planned to wait until I was fully dressed, grab me and throw me into the shower. I was very upset about the news and went home and told my mother. The next morning, Mama handed me a bag. She said, “Melissa, here’s what I want you to do. I have put a change of clothes in this bag. After class, put the clothes you are wearing now back on. When you see the girls coming toward you, run into the shower room, stand under the shower and turn it on yourself.” I couldn’t believe my mother was actually telling me to get into the shower with my clothes on, so I asked her why she wanted me to do this. She told me that if I did it myself, the girls would be powerless and would then leave me alone. After class, I went to the locker room and got dressed. I played the fight song on the lockers as usual and carried on my business acting as if nothing was going on. I looked up and saw them coming. Four girls with evil in their eyes. I turned around and started walking toward the shower room. As the pace picked up behind me, I sprinted into the room and jumped under one of the shower heads. I turned on the water and let it drip down my head and onto my clothes. I then looked at the girls with a big smile and waved at them. They were stopped in their tracks and stunned. Just like my mother said, they were powerless. They turned around and left. I got out, got dressed in my fresh clothes, brushed my hair and left the locker room never to be bothered by them again.

(Click on the book cover to read more.)

To help you live this liberation, a Britt theme song of love and grace from God…

 

Learn from A.A.

I’m so glad we have A.A. meetings in our church. Their presence reminds me of who and how we should be as a church community. Here is a reflection from Frederick Buechner on what makes A.A. a shining model of what churches might become when (and if) we grow up.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS or A.A. is the name of a group of men and women who acknowledge that addiction to alcohol is ruining their lives. Their purpose in coming together is to give it up and help others do the same. They realize they can’t pull this off by themselves. They believe they need each other, and they believe they need God. The ones who aren’t so sure about God speak instead of their Higher Power.
When they first start talking at a meeting, they introduce themselves by saying, “I am John. I am an alcoholic,” “I am Mary. I am an alcoholic,” to which the rest of the group answers each time in unison, “Hi, John,” “Hi, Mary.” They are apt to end with the Lord’s Prayer or the Serenity Prayer. Apart from that they have no ritual. They have no hierarchy. They have no dues or budget. They do not advertise or proselytize. Having no buildings of their own, they meet wherever they can.
Nobody lectures them, and they do not lecture each other. They simply tell their own stories with the candor that anonymity makes possible. They tell where they went wrong and how day by day they are trying to go right. They tell where they find the strength and understanding and hope to keep trying. Sometimes one of them will take special responsibility for another—to be available at any hour of day or night if the need arises. There’s not much more to it than that, and it seems to be enough. Healing happens. Miracles are made.
You can’t help thinking that something like this is what the Church is meant to be and maybe once was before it got to be Big Business. Sinners Anonymous. “I can will what is right but I cannot do it,” is the way Saint Paul put it, speaking for all of us. “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:19).
“I am me. I am a sinner.”
“Hi, you.”
Hi, every Sadie and Sal. Hi, every Tom, Dick, and Harry. It is the forgiveness of sins, of course. It is what the Church is all about.
No matter what far place alcoholics end up in, either in this country or virtually anywhere else, they know that there will be an A.A. meeting nearby to go to and that at that meeting they will find strangers who are not strangers to help and to heal, to listen to the truth and to tell it. That is what the Body of Christ is all about.
Would it ever occur to Christians in a far place to turn to a church nearby in hope of finding the same? Would they find it? If not, you wonder what is so Big about the Church’s Business.

– Originally published in Whistling in the Dark

Additional Resources for Reflection:

12 STEPPING SONGS

PARABLE OF THE BIG BOOK

Alt Right, Alt Left, Alt Jesus?

In the midst of so much hate-speech, “What would Jesus do?” is a bit problematic in his encounter outside his hometown with a Canaanite woman. Mark’s version is addressed in this chapter from Out of The Crowd. Matthew’s version is addressed in a link to an audio sermon file.
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   Jesus did not have an administrative assistant to set his schedule. We don’t have old copies of Jesus’ calendar so that we can see the persons and groups Jesus intended to meet. His encounters often seem random, as if there was no plan, and the people Jesus met were haphazard – like the woman who happens to be at the well in the middle of the day or the blind beggar on the outskirts of Jericho. However, perhaps Jesus wasn’t just going away from crowds but instead headed toward particular individuals. If Jesus had a calendar, it might have listed the names of these individuals, one by one. For Jesus, they would have been more than appointments and agenda items, but each a person a distinct encounter, like this woman. While others had to stand up to family, religious crowds, even soldiers to claim their place in the world as beloved of God, she had a unique challenge. She had to stand up to Jesus. Here is their encounter in Mark 7,

    Jesus journeyed with the disciples to the region of Tyre. Upon arrival, Jesus secretly entered a house.
   A woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. The woman was not Jewish but a Gentile of Syrophoenician origin. She begged Jesus to help her daughter.
   Jesus replied, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to dogs.”
   She answered Jesus, “But sir, even the dogs under the table get to eat the children’s crumbs.”
   Jesus laughed and affirmed her answer. He said, “You may go, the demon has left your daughter. She is well.”
   The woman went home and found her daughter lying on the bed, the demon gone.
   The next day, Jesus and the disciples left the area.
   Related image
   Imagine you are this woman. You have heard that Jesus was coming. Your daughter is ill, and you have been unable to help her, so you go looking for Jesus. The rumors you heard about him are enough to make you cross whatever social barriers there are to see if he can heal your child. Even those closest to you daunt you, “He won’t see you,” or “They won’t let you in.” Their discouragement might have been enough to stop you, but you weren’t just going for yourself.
   You get through your friends and Jesus’ followers, and you see him, your hope. You take the position of subservience; you fall to his feet as a beggar seeking mercy from the only one you believe can help you. Pleading, you cry out, “My daughter is ill. Can you… Will you please help her?”
   Jesus does not raise you up. He does not lift you from the floor. He speaks down to you in a condescending attitude as if the floor is where you belong. Why does he not lift you up as the rumors say he had lifted others? He speaks to you as you were afraid he might, rejecting you and your request, rejecting your daughter. He confirms your fear with an insult, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
   Essentially, Jesus says, “I’m here for the children of Israel, the children of God, not your child, and not you or your daughter. There is not enough to go around – not enough food, not enough love, not enough help. No one throws scarce food meant for the children to dogs – like you. Now, go away.” Jesus insults you, your gender, your race, and your people. Jesus tells you that you are less than a person and so is your daughter, you are less than human, you are dogs and don’t deserve help.
   Jesus, who had earlier, taught, “Don’t let evil things come out of you,” lets the insults fly, and does so at the dinner table, not only an important symbol in Judaism, but for the early church, and for Jesus. While he had given many sinners, traitors, and social reprobates places at the table, here he denies this woman her very right to health and life for her child and gives her a metaphor that not only doesn’t allow her a seat at the table – Jesus puts her under it.
   Most of us have difficulty imagining Jesus being rude. There are multiple excuses granted to Jesus in commentaries for this behavior, “He was tired and hungry. This just shows he’s human, we can all be rude when we are tired and hungry.” “Because Jesus was human, he had his own bigotries and prejudices.” “If you knew the Syrophoenicians and the evil they had done over time, you’d see she deserved it.” Even with these excuses, the Gospel writer would likely have not included it unless Jesus was intentionally rude for a purpose.
   These excuses overlook the underlying implication of Jesus’ journey. Though this woman is an intruder to their dinner, it may be that she’s the very reason that Jesus came. The encounter begins in Mark with, “Jesus left from there and went away to the region of Tyre,” and after the encounter, the next day, “Then he returned from the region of Tyre.” Jesus travels, encounters her, and the next day returns. Perhaps she was the only reason for the journey. There are no other encounters. While in this region, Jesus didn’t go see any of the Jews living there, didn’t go meet with any leaders or philosophers, didn’t go to any place of teaching or worship, didn’t meet with any government leaders. Though she seems like an intruder, she may have been exactly the person he traveled to see, the encounter he expected, the moment he wanted. If so, then perhaps this insult is just the gift she needed from him for her to claim her place as a beloved daughter of God.
   Jesus challenged her with the insult, but he also gave her other images: children of God, a table, and the house of God. Though Jesus threw scarcity at her, he offered her images of abundance in God’s house. Because it is God’s house, the rules change, and she knows it. If God does love humanity, and God does love her, then it is a Godly love. It doesn’t rank on value but gives value. There is nothing she can do to make God love her more, but because she is loved, there is a lot she can do – even challenge Jesus if he limits God’s love.
   When she comes, she goes to the floor. That’s the appropriate social place for a Syrophonecian woman coming uninvited, without permission to the presence of a Jewish man. He affirms her self-placement, “You are lower, down there with the dogs.” To be beloved of God, we must claim it. Jesus lets her. Here is how she does it. First, she doesn’t argue the insult, but accepts it as a gift. Even a dog in the house of God is loved with God’s infinite love. You cannot add to an infinite love. So in the Master’s house, in the house of an infinite value giving love of God, even the dogs are loved infinitely. If the children are loved more, infinity plus one, it is still infinity. She does not debate Jesus’ insult; she removes it of all power by placing herself at the table of God, the God of infinite love. Granted, she may not have known the math or added infinity plus one, but she felt it. At God’s table, it does not matter if you come as Moses or a mutt, sit at it or beneath it. The table is God’s table and therefore a wondrous place to be.
   Jesus also gives her another hint. Bread. He implied that there is not enough bread for her or her family and that God’s chosen get it first. The crowd says, “My group not yours,” or, much more subtly, the crowd says, “My group – then yours, later.” The crowd accepts an idea of justice for the whole world, an image where no one will hunger – one day. Jesus says, “Let the children be fed first,” not that you won’t get food, medicine, love, “That will come one day, just be patient.”
   In Turkey, there is a longstanding tradition of when a woman sees a bird near her house or land on a windowsill, she says, “Haberes Buenos.” Haberes means ‘news’ and Buenos means ‘good.’ The hope is the bird will bring good news about why women are always placed in a subservient role to men.
   The tradition is rooted in legend. Long ago, women asked King Solomon why men were allowed to marry more than one woman but women weren’t allowed the same right. Even wise King Solomon was stumped. He replied, “Only God knows.” Well the women weren’t satisfied with that answer, so Solomon said, “Let’s ask God.” Solomon wrote the question on a piece of parchment and tied it to the leg of a bird. Solomon sent the bird to flight with the instruction of taking the message to God and not to come back without an answer.
   So, the women keep waiting, they look to birds and ask, “Good news?” But the birds come empty handed. So, they wait, accepting the world as is, hoping that God, King, men, or some government or organization will value them and raise them from their position of less-than to a place of equality, of mutual status as valued and beloved.
   Injustice is promoted as “the will of God” as others since have sited the place of women, slaves, other nations, all part of God’s hierarchy for the blessing and benefit of those in power. There is another answer, not that injustice is the will of God, but that one day, like the slaves in Egypt, God will make a way. For now, the faithful are to wait. Jesus uses both with the woman, her place at the floor is just, and she will have to wait for the children of Israel to be fed first as there is not enough bread for everyone.
   Again, she is onto him. This of course is Jesus, the guy who feeds five thousand people with five loaves and two fish. Here, Jesus speaks of scarcity, “There is not enough food to go around, but maybe one day.” Hidden in the image of bread, she gets the wink. Jesus’ metaphor points again to abundance. There is room, now. There is plenty, here. She answers him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
   She speaks of a limitless power of God where even the crumbs, the leftovers, the discarded is more than enough. So, she refused to accept insult because she believed that God was abundantly loving and gracious. She claimed her place. She would not be forced to take an assigned space in a world where some are the beloved of God and some are dogs. She would not accept an image of God that valued one race, one people, one gender higher than another, one at the table and one below it. She claimed a value giving love, and for her, the categories of the crowd disappeared. For her to wait and not claim her place at the table would have been a sign of a terrible lack of faith.
   Jesus affirmed her answer. In my imagination, though not in the text, he laughed and smiled at her, affirming her bold stance, affirming her refusal to wait on God, government, Jesus, or any other to claim her place as beloved child of God, at God’s table, and God’s kingdom. Then Jesus sent her on her way telling her that her daughter is well.
   The next day, Jesus left the area. Perhaps she is why he came, but not for her alone. Perhaps it was for so much more. By challenging her to take her place as beloved at the table of God, Jesus encouraged her to take a stand, and she became a model for the rest of the area. She overcame what Henri Nouwen refers to as our greatest temptation,
  
   Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation of self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, “Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody.” … [My dark side says,] I am no good… I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved.” Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”
  
   Because she stood up to Jesus and claimed for herself her place as beloved, she could encourage others to do the same. Perhaps this text was in the gospel because of her, she was remembered throughout the area as the woman who would not wait and who would not take less than “Beloved,” for an answer, not even from Jesus, and she encouraged others to do the same.
   While we often place power in the Empires, it is the power of single individuals taking a stand that begin true social change, as Scott Peck observed,
  
   The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual…. For it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.
  

   She may have set a fire that transformed all of Tyre, not just for herself, but for her daughter, and for all the generations to come.
(To read more, click on the book cover on the right.)

(For an audio of a sermon on this story in Matthew, click the podcast picture on the right.)
  
  

Confronted by The Klan, a Body in Search of a Soul

As I have watched and listen to the events from Charlottesville, Virginia and all that has followed, I keep thinking back to Barbara Brown Taylor’s response to a confrontation she had with the Klan related in her book, The Bread of Angels. Her reflection is shaped around Paul’s words to the church 1 Corinthians 12:12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ as she wonders just who is part of Christ’s body. Her response to hatred humbles me. I wonder if my soul would fare as well.

   The North Georgia Peace Council sponsored the ninth annual Martin Luther King Day walk through my hometown of Clarkesville. We are never a very big crowd but we are generally a pretty interesting one. This year we included folks from all the Main Street churches plus some Baha’is and Quakers and plain old humanists. The black Baptist preacher was there with his two little girls and so were some young people in t-shirts from the AmeriCorps, the new national service league devoted to caring for the developmentally disabled.
The plan was to walk from Grace-Calvary Episcopal Church to Mount Zion Baptist Church on the other side of the town square. That was easy enough, but just before we left we got word that the Ku Klux Klan was waiting for us at the square. This news rendered me somewhat breathless. There were plenty of police around, so it was not physical violence I feared. I feared my own reaction to people I had heard so much about all my life – people famous for their hatred, who called themselves Christians just like me. I think I feared for my soul- not only for what they might do to it, but for what I might d to it myself by returning their hate.
   We set out, singing. The organizers of the walk always put the clergy at the front, which I had previously misinterpreted as an honor. This time I knew we were up there as buffers between those behind us and those ahead of us, human air bags in case of collision. For better or worse, we had an unobstructed view. We turned the corner, singing, “He’s got the whole world in his hands,” and there they were – several men and a woman in white robes and pointed hats, with some other people standing around them in plain clothes.
   They did not hide their faces, which I appreciated. They just held up their signs so we could not miss them. One featured a picture of Dr. King’s head with a rifle viewfinder zeroed in on it. “Our dream came true,” it read. “James Earl Ray made our day,” said another, and a third proclaimed, “Christ is our King.”
“He’s got you and me, brother in his hands.” That is what we were singing as we turned the corner and walked away from them. “He’s got you and me, sister, I his hands.” I was not scared anymore. I was mystified, because if the song was right—if what Paul said was true—then I had just walked past some members of my own body, who were as hard for me to accept as a cancer or a blocked artery. And if I did not accept them—if I let them remain separate from me the way they wanted me to—then I became one of them, one more of the people who insist that there are some people who cannot belong to the body.
   Actually, my struggle was irrelevant at that point, because if the song is right – if what Paul said is true – then God is not waiting for any of us to decide who is in or out of Christs body, not even ourselves. This truth is beyond our consent or liking. We are the body of Christ and individually embers of it. Whenever anyone laughs, cries, lives, or dies in tis web of creation we are all affected by it whether we know it or not. When one suffers we all suffer and when one is honored all the rest of us rejoice, if only way down deep in Christi’s bones where only he knows it is happening at all
   Most of the time we live as tough this were a fond illusion, but there is a distinct possibility that it is our separateness which is the illusion instead. There is an old Sufi saying that goes like this: “You think because you understand ‘one’ you must understand ‘two,’ because one and one make two. But you must also understand ‘and.’”
You know who our ‘and’ is, don’t you? The creator of all our parts, the author of our wholeness, the lover of complete impostors, the Lord of electrons, the one who’s got the whole world in his hands with room left over, turning you and me and them into us.

Learn as You Play

Last night, our Preschool Director, Laura Sinyard, shared this philosophy for our preschool at the parent meeting. I think it comes pretty close to what Jesus had in mind when he said, “Come as a Child.”
 
Image result for children playing preschoolJust Playing by Anita Wadley
 
When I’m building in the block room,
Please don’t say I’m “Just playing.”
For, you see, I’m learning as I play,
About balance, I may be an architect someday.
 
When I’m getting all dressed up,
Setting the table, caring for the babies,
don’t get the idea I’m “Just Playing.”
I may be a mother or a father someday.
 
When you see me up to my elbows in paint,
Or standing at an easel, or molding and shaping clay,
Please don’t let me hear you say, “He is Just Playing.”
For, you see, I’m learning as I play.
I just might be a teacher someday.
 
When you see me engrossed in a puzzle or
some “playing” at my school,
Please don’t feel the time is wasted in “play.”
For you see, I’m learning as I play.
I’m learning to solve problems and concentrate.
I may be in business someday.
 
When you see me cooking or tasting foods,
Please don’t think that because I enjoy it, it is “Just Play.”
I’m learning to follow directions and see the differences.
I may be a cook someday.
 
When you see me learning to skip, hop, run, and move my body,
Please don’t say I’m “Just Playing.”
For, you see, I’m learning as I play.
I’m learning how my body works. I may
be a doctor, nurse, or athlete someday.
 
When you ask me what I’ve done at school today,
And I say, “I just played.”
Please don’t misunderstand me.
For, you see, I’m learning as I play.
I’m learning to enjoy and be successful in my work.
I’m preparing for tomorrow.
Today, I am a child and my work is play.

Get Found!

hidingWhen I was a youth, I remember a popular add campaign called, “I Found It.” There were bumper stickers, infomercials, and an I Found It book with testimonials from famous celebrities and athletes. What was it that people found which made such a difference in their lives? God. I can’t help but look back on my life since I got my I Found It book, bumper sticker, and read Tom Landry’s testimonial. In my life, my testimonials aren’t really about how many ways I have found God, but instead, my stories are about the many ways God has found me. I wander off, get caught up in current fads, totally doze off in my journey like the hare in Aesop’s fable, or camouflage myself and blend in like Adam and Eve in their cameo of fig leaves, and still, somehow, God finds me. Again, and again, I get found. No matter the degree I seem to be searching for God, or not, God seems to be searching for me. The parallel I’ve found is in how Robert Fulghum described one of my favorite games, Sardines.

In the early dry dark of an October’s Saturday evening, the neighborhood children are playing hide-and-seek. How long since I played hide-and-seek? Thirty years; maybe more. I remember how. I could become part of the game in a moment, if invited. Adults don’t play hide-and-seek. Not for fun, anyway. Too bad.
Did you have a kid in your neighborhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him? We did. After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot wherever he was. Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because we didn’t keep looking for him. And we would get mad back because he wasn’t playing the game the way it was supposed to be played. There’s hiding and there’s finding, we’d say. And he’d say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-give-UP, and we’d all yell about who made the rules and who cared about who, anyway, and how we wouldn’t play with him anymore if he didn’t get it straight and who needed him anyhow, and things like that. Hide-and-seek-and-yell. No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He’s probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know.
As I write this, the neighborhood game goes on, and there is a kid under a pile of leaves in the yard just under my window. He has been there a long time now, and everybody else is found and they are about to give up on him over at the base. I considered going out to the base and telling them where he is hiding. And I thought about setting the leaves on fire to drive him out. Finally, I just yelled, “GET FOUND, KID!” out the window. And scared him so bad he probably wet his pants and started crying and ran home to tell his mother. It’s real hard to know how to be helpful sometimes.
A man I know found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn’t want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn’t need them, didn’t trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn’t say good-bye.
He hid too well. Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found. “I don’t want anyone to know.” “What will people think?” “I don’t want to bother anyone.”
Better than hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines. In Sardines the person who is It goes and hides, and everybody goes looking for him. When you find him, you get in with him and hide there with him. Pretty soon everybody is hiding together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile. And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody laughs and everybody gets found.
Medieval theologians even described God in hide-and-seek terms, calling him Deus Absconditus. But me, I think old God is a Sardine player. And will be found the same way everybody gets found in Sardines – by the sound of laughter of those heaped together at the end.
“Olly-olly-oxen-free.” The kids out in the street are hollering the cry that says “Come on in, wherever you are. It’s a new game.” And so say I. To all those who have hid too good. Get found, kid! Olly-olly-oxen-free.

What does Reaching out to the lost mean for Macland? I believe it is a challenge to Get Found! And help others do the same, for we, like Adam and Eve before us, hide far too well. So to all you who have been hiding, “Get Found!” Come out, come out, wherever you are.

For Fathers, Sons, and Daughters

In Matthew 6, Jesus taught his followers to pray in this way, “Our Father…” 

As we approach Father’s Day, with a celebration of dads heavenly and otherwise, I see a parallel between God the rest of us regulars, we all want the same for our children, to grow, to become, to live, and to love. As my son Nathan continues to grow into his teenage year and is gaining wrestling skill from camp and club, I am well aware that it won’t be long until my son pins his father. For the hopeful continued growth for Cayla, Abbie, and Nathan, and to encourage all of us to continue to grow and encourage growth in each other, I offer this simple poem by Orval Lund that he wrote for his father.
Wrist-wrestling father
Orval Lund
for my father

On the maple wood we placed our elbows
and gripped hands, the object to bend
the other’s arm to the kitchen table.
We flexed our arms and waited for the sign.
I once shot a wild goose.
I once stood not twenty feet from a buck deer unnoticed.
I’ve seen a woods full of pink lady slippers.
I once caught a 19-inch trout on a tiny fly.
I’ve seen the Pacific, I’ve seen the Atlantic,
I’ve watched whales in each.
I once heard Lenny Bruce tell jokes.
I’ve seen Sandy Koufax pitch a baseball.
I’ve heard Paul Desmond play the saxophone.
I’ve been to London to see the Queen.
I’ve had dinner with a Nobel Prize poet.
I wrote a poem once with every word but one just right.
I’ve fathered two fine sons
and loved the same woman for twenty-five years.
But I’ve never been more amazed
than when I snapped my father’s arm down to the table.

What’s Your Vocation?

Ever wonder what the difference is between a job, a career, and a vocation? In this excerpt from Out of The Crowd, I try and help clarify the difference.
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When Jesus calls the first disciples, he calls them from not just their families, but out of their jobs and careers and into a vocation. The distinction between these three is significant and can be seen in Mark 1,

Jesus was walking along the Sea of Galilee, where he saw Simon and his brother Andrew, who were fishermen, casting nets into the lake.
Jesus speaks to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.” And immediately, they left their nets and followed him.
In a similar matter, after walking on a little farther, Jesus, now with Simon and Andrew tagging along, calls out to James and John who were in their family boat with their father, Zebedee. Like the two before, then immediately left their nets, their boat, and their father, and followed Jesus.

In this passage are three groups: the hired men, the fishermen, and the disciples or followers of Jesus. They illustrate the three different ways we work: jobs, careers, and vocations.

JOBS

A job involves basic skill, basic labor, and basic pay to try and meet basic needs. In the passage, these are the workers, those on Zebedee’s boat who likely did a day’s work for a day’s pay. My first job was in a textile mill in South Carolina when I was sixteen. I worked second shift, from 4:00 to midnight. I learned to drink coffee dispensed nightly for a quarter out of a vending machine and was paid by the hour.

CAREERS

A career differs from a job in training and role. A career has background, education, experience, and investment. Jesus encountered some career fishermen in Zebedee and sons with their boat. They had training, skill, and investment in the family business.  After college, I went to seminary, twice. I earned masters degrees in youth ministry and divinity. I studied Greek and Hebrew and passed ordination exams. This is my career, accepted into the Presbyterian system, ordained, blessed, and allowed to pastor. I even have a pension. Do you think Andrew or Simon asked Jesus if he had a health plan or a pension program before dropping their nets at the shore? Likely not.
The word, “career,” comes from the Latin word for car, which comes from carrera, which means “racetrack.” Like a racetrack, careers have structure, direction, and competition. And, like a racetrack, a career can have you feeling like you are going very fast, around, and around, in circles, never ending. No matter who wins a particular race, another competition will start shortly, and another, and another. And if you cannot fill your lane, don’t worry, there will be another to take your place and the race will keep moving, and moving, and moving.
Students are set on college tracks and career tracks taught to compete with each other in race after race, score after score. Students are ranked, from first to last, high to low, with their cumulative score or grade point average. We score their schools as well. The hope is to prepare students to take their place in society and to keep racing as our economy depends on it. They are promised great rewards for their effort, and if they work hard enough and succeed, they can drink from the cup of glory, whatever that is.
Kierkegaard warned about the effects of our jobs and careers and the responsibility of communities to watch out for each other in this story,
A farm village’s crop was infested by a strange bug that contaminated all their food. Once they realized that eating the food made them crazy, they quit eating it. Then they started to starve. The village leaders met and agreed they must eat to survive, but they also decided to work together to remind each other that the very food they ate to survive made them crazy.
Taking our place in crowds, pursuing careers, doing all that we do for food, family, groups, culture, is dangerous when we forget the madness that they can produce, then around and around we go, faster and faster and call it life, saying, “We have no choice.”
When you live going only in circles, how can a sense of direction be possible? The church should be that village voice, the agreement upon leaders that the very food that we eat makes us mad, calling the crowds into question, challenging our consumer economy, our chasing the dollar. We should join the prophets, poets, and playwrights, like Charles Bukowski,

Some lose all mind
and become soul, insane
some lose all soul
and become mind, intellectual
some lose both
and become accepted.

In a critique of business life in America, Arthur Miller wrote The Death of a Salesman. Willy Loman, the tragic character who dominates the play, is laid to rest in a cemetery following his suicide. At the graveside on a bleak and rainy day, the immediate family is huddled together along with a couple of friends. His wife cries softly over the casket, “Why? Why? Why did you do it, Willy?” It is then that Willy’s son, Biff, speaks and says, “Aw, shucks, Mom. Aw, shucks. He had all the wrong dreams. He had all the wrong dreams.”

VOCATION

When I read or tell of the calling of the disciples, I am often asked, “How could they just leave everything – job, career, family, and follow Jesus with no more information, and no guarantees?”
My question is, “How could they not?” James, John, Simon, and Andrew weren’t very good fishermen, we have record of them fishing all night and not catching anything on more than one occasion, and they seldom seem to be fishing but are instead always fixing their boat or mending their nets. But there is more, besides giving them an out to a career they seem ill suited for, Jesus gave them their calling, their vocatio.  “Vocation” comes from the Latin word, vocare, which means, “to call.” Carl Jung describes people with vocation,

What is it, in the end, that induces someone to go his own way and to rise out of unconscious identity with the mass as out of a swathing mist? Not necessity, for necessity comes to many, and they all take refuge in convention. Not moral decision, for nine times out of ten we decide for convention likewise. What is it, then, that inexorably tips the scales in favor of the extra-ordinary?

It is what is commonly called vocation: an irrational factor that destines a person to emancipate himself from the herd and from its well-worn paths.
Vocation is not for God to hear you calling, but for you to hear God’s calling. Vocation is not for God to respond to the desires of your heart but for you to align your life with the passion and fire of God’s heart. Vocation is not for you to have a five-year plan that makes sense to you but for you to live in a way that makes sense to God. To align your life with the heart of God, to live Jesus’ way in the world, to discover your distinctive and particular place as an alive human in the image of God will give purpose and meaning to your life, Frederick Buechner said, 

The vocation for you is the one in which your deep gladness and the world’s deep need meet – something that not only makes you happy but that the world needs to have done.

Vocation is both self-fulfilling and world fulfilling. It is both living into your calling of becoming not just a beloved child of God, but a beloved adult of God and facilitating the world’s growth into The Kingdom of God, which Jesus illustrated in Matthew 5 with the following imagery,

Each of you is the salt of the earth. If salt has no flavor, can you make it salty again? No, unless it gives flavor to food, it’s thrown out and trampled on. Each of you is the light of the world. When people get together and build a city, they don’t hide it in a valley but put it on a hill so others can come to it. In the same way, why would anyone light a candle or a lamp and put it under a bucket? No, you put it on the table so that it gives light to all the house.

So let it be with you. Let your light shine so that others may see the wonder of what you do and give glory. Being flavor for the earth, letting our light shine, stepping out like a city on a hill, or a singer on stage, can take great courage, bravery that often takes years to develop.

One of my dearest friends is Etta Britt. She got her first ‘record deal’ a little older than the Nashville norm. Here is a selection of an article by Lori Weiss in The Huffington Post on Etta’s story, It Ain’t Over – Out of the Shadows, Mom Signs Record Deal at 55.

From the time Etta Britt was a young girl, she was singing back-up for Diana Ross. It’s just that Diana didn’t know it. Because Etta was in front of her bedroom mirror in Louisville, Kentucky — hair brush in hand, as a microphone, of course — pretending she was one of the Supremes.
“I’d stand there for hours,” Etta laughed, “and pretend I was on stage. And my brother would come in and tease me, and I’d throw the hairbrush at him.”
“When I walk out on stage, I often say ‘You’re probably wondering who I am. Well, I’m a 55-year-old woman who just got her first record deal.’ And I get a standing ovation.
“Just like the title of the CD, I feel like I’m coming out of the shadows,” Etta said with a tear in her eye. “And now I’m showing my daughters that it doesn’t matter what your age is — you can still make your dreams come true.”

Etta came out of her shadows, her cultural, familial, and her own mental crowd to let her light shine. She celebrated the voice she had to share and the songs she has to sing, and encourages others to do the same. When you step out like Etta, it gives other people encouragement to come out of their own shadows and let their light shine. If you get the chance to watch a singer like Etta, one who is a band leader as well as a performer, one who is an encourager sharing both her light and the spotlight, sharing her music and weaving together the music of others, then you can see how one soul taking her place encourages others to do the same.

Etta and I have found these words by Author Marianne Williamson encouraging in both coming out of the shadows and the crowd,

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be?
Who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest
the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some of us: it is in (all of us),
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.

Let Your Light Shine

I’m preaching today on the light of the world passage from the Sermon on The Mount in Matthew 5:

Matthew 5: 13 “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and
trampled under foot. 14 “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

I am amazed at how different images from a scripture I’m living with during the week come to the surface when I’m thinking through my lenses of a Biblical passage. So often we make Jesus a person who is one in a billion, a person like no other, and, I believe, we miss where Jesus’ identity and life point us.

Continue reading “Let Your Light Shine”