The Necessary and Possible Church - Part 1
For many of us, it is like watching a disaster movie only to discover that we are in it!
These are crazy times.
For many of us, it is like watching a disaster movie only to discover that we are in it! The jaw-dropping exponential rise of deaths, newly diagnosed cases and spread of COVID-19 are not fantasy. They are real. And so is the fear, loss of life, and loss of income that have been ushered in with it. Is it true that as many as 80% of us could become infected? Will our health care system be overwhelmed and collapse? Are we headed into an economic depression? Can we trust our leaders? We are confused. We are fragmented. We are frightened.
Where is Jesus?
As the church we claim that even amid these dark days there is yet good news. God has not abandoned us. Our grounding of that claim is the life, death, and resurrection of God’s Messiah, Jesus. But, as more and more of the population exists in self-quarantine and practices social distancing while others – health care workers, food providers, and other essential services – put themselves at risk for the sake of the common good, how does the church draw persons into the life and hope of Jesus? At a time when church doors are closed, people no longer gather in assembly for worship, and cyber worshipping opportunities are offered instead, just where is Jesus? This is an important question, because it is not our technological savvy that delivers us from the perils of this age. It’s Jesus, the one who would not stay dead because he loves us. So, where is he?
Present or Absent?
In December 2003 at the inaugural event for the Abiding Hope Academy for Adaptive Leadership and Spiritual Formation, New Testament Scholar par excellence Mark Allen Powell gave a presentation on the biblical tension concerning the presence and absence of Jesus. When it comes to the question, “Where is Jesus?” the New Testament holds two seemingly contradictory positions. On the one hand, the scriptures proclaim that the crucified and risen Jesus is always with us. This position is best, but not only, supported by the final words of Jesus on the Gospel of Matthew. “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). On the other hand, the scriptures also proclaim, most notably the narrative of Luke-Acts, that Jesus is not with us. Instead, Jesus has ascended only to reappear in the future in the same way in which he was “taken up” (Acts 1:11). Our creeds hold this latter position.
So, what is the church to believe?
Is Jesus with us always, as he clearly promises he will be? Or, has Jesus absconded “into heaven” somewhere only to reappear at an unknown time out in the future? The answer to both questions is yes! And, as Mark Powell would argue, we cannot choose one position over the other. We must embrace both. Powell says that it is the very presence of Jesus that makes the church possible. He may not be present in the same way as he will be when he “comes again,” but he is yet present. At the same time, it is the absence of the still yet-to-come Jesus that makes the church necessary.
Embracing the Possible
Given Matthew’s insistence on the presence of Jesus, it is not surprising that in a narrative section dealing with forgiveness and reconciliation, Matthew’s Jesus says, “For wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20). In just a few verses before these words, verse 17, is the only use of the word, “church,” in the four canonical Gospels. “Church” is the word used to translate the Greek word, =ekklnsiva, from which we get the word ecclesial or ecclesiology. In its root form the word means an assembly of people called out of the world for God’s purposes. It is a worshipping community. Because of a Constantinian hangover we have come to think of church as being about buildings, budgets, programs, councils, programs, Robert and his Rules and the like. But the church’s primal expression is worship. Dogs lick. The church worships. And according to the words of Jesus in Matthew 18, a quorum for the presence of Jesus is two.
More than a Silent Bystander
But when Jesus comes and joins the assembly of only two, it is not that we have an additional unseen bystander present. It is the risen Jesus coming to us with power. Because I am theologically Lutheran in my identity, I cling to the notion that Jesus is present in specific ways: in Word and Sacrament. Our very confessional documents (Augsburg Confession, Article VII) states that the church is the assembly where the gospel is preached in its purity and the sacraments (Baptism and Eucharist) are administered according to the gospel. In other words, when the scriptures are read in the assembly, when the gospel is preached, when the Word is expressed in hymnody and our liturgy, the risen Jesus is present. And because he is present, the Word comes to us as more than just information. It’s transformation. It moves us. It impacts us. It changes us. It frees us.
Bread and Wine
But what about a word that does not move us? What about an assembly where the preacher gives a sermon that would be a great pep talk at the Rotary Club but does not invoke the gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection? What about a preacher who takes us to ancient Palestine and leaves us there? Are such words the “gospel preached in its purity?”
No Ambiguity
What we can claim, without ambiguity, is that when bread and wine are taken, when thanks is given, when the elements are blessed with the ancient words of Jesus, “This is my body given for you. This is the blood of the new covenant shed for you and all people for the forgiveness of sin,” gospel is happening. And when the gospel happens in, under, and with bread and wine among God’s people, the real presence of Christ happens. As Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
The gospel overcomes Social Isolation
In this time of social isolation and fear arising with the increasingly ominous escalation of COVID-19, the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and its eschatological implications are what makes the church possible. When the church got going after the women discovered the empty tomb and preached the first sermon, “Jesus is risen!” the defining activity of the church was the meal. Encountering a risen Jesus in the meal the disciples and early church were empowered to reimagine their circumstances and their future. As they would eventually hunker down in their house churches under Roman threats, celebrating the meal invoked the presence of the one who was innocently executed by the Romans and yet rose and overcame it to appear again to his followers. He made himself known in the “breaking of the bread” (cf. Luke 24:35). When we gathered as the church in Littleton, Colorado after the Columbine High School shootings and when adequate words seemed illusive at times, it was the meal, the coming of a risen Jesus who himself was victimized and murdered, with wounds to show it, that worked to heal and bring resilience to our community.
The meal and the possible church
Particularly important today is that when we are isolated and celebrate the meal, we recall that Jesus himself was isolated, and outcast, murdered outside the walls of Jerusalem on a garbage heap, and yet rose and came back to his followers. The meal, as a “foretaste of the feast to come,” is the clearest image of what God promises in the worst of times, that there will come a banquet for all people where everything that separates us, divides us, demeans us, even suffering and death, will be swallowed up and overcome forever (cf. Isaiah 25:6-10).
Not a time for abstinence
I have read several statements and treatises that argue that the church, when gathering as a cyber community, should refrain from celebrating the meal. With all due respect, I do not agree with any of the arguments I have read. I do not believe that the bread and the wine need to be lifted and touched by holy hands to validate it. I do not believe that the assembly must be physically present. I understand good order (I think). But instead of looking at a community that is physically separated due to social distancing and cyber worship being an obstacle, we should look at Zoom and other platforms that bring us together as a gift. And more importantly, what is pleasing to God? When there were those who objected to Jesus’ disciples picking grain on the Sabbath, did not Jesus reframe their objections by drawing attention to rules for rules sake versus rules that may be broken to give life?
Our little congregation celebrates the meal when we gather for worship through Zoom. Last Sunday we had people from three different time zones participating together. Each of us had a small plate of bread and a cup of wine (or grape juice) positioned in front of our devices. When the pastor lifted bread and the cup and said the words spoken for centuries in the assembly, my wife and I then broke bread and gave it to each other, “The body of Christ given for you,” and we then gave the cup to each other saying, “The blood of Christ shed for you.” Gospel happened. It was a holy moment. Jesus and his promises were present. And we all received the blessing from our pastor together through space and across the time zones, “May the body and blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ strengthen you and keep you in his grace.” After the final benediction, we knew that church had happened. The meal made it possible.
As we are isolated and the threats continue to mount, it can feel like Friday, but Sunday is coming. I can’t wait!
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,
Weekly Reflections for Lent - 2019
With the 20th anniversary of that awful day known as "Columbine” falling on Holy Saturday, I offer this final reflection in this year’s series for Lent.
Final Reflection for Lent - April 17, 2019
You who are reading this reflection already know the outcome of this week. The Great Three Days – from Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday – take worshippers and followers of Jesus on another annual journey from the hell of the crucifixion to the triumph of the empty tomb. Almost all attempts to “explain” the Sunday triumph over the awful Friday fall short. Easter is not a springtime ritual where crocuses blooming, Georgia azaleas being in their brilliant red, and the warmth of the sun are somehow synonymous with the third day. Easter lilies may beautiful the church chancel area and may be a prop for many children’s sermons, but they cannot explain Easter. Even the most used metaphor of all, the little caterpillar morphing into a chrysalis that then transforms into a butterfly, is inadequate.
The story of Easter is about a dead Jew whom God raised from the dead. Easter is new. Flowers blooming and the life cycle of insects are not new. Neither is resuscitation. Resurrection is. Resurrection defies all attempts to explain. To be clear, Easter is not about a happy ending to an awful tragedy and miscarriage of justice. Easter promises no happy endings to the tragic stories of our lives, even though we may want to cling to such naiveite of faith. If Easter is a promise of happy endings then what do we say about that awful day in Littleton, Colorado 20 years ago, forever known as “Columbine?” Twenty years later, folks still long for answers. Twenty years later, there is no happy ending to many whose lives were shattered. Evil still exists, and there is no need for a list of examples here.
Soaking up the brokenness in the world around us in these times, cynicism is perhaps the prevailing attitude of people. Only for a few days does the magnificent comeback of Tiger Woods at the Masters divert our attention away from the hate, injustice, divisiveness, fears, and tragedies in this world. Perhaps to really be grasped by the peace and promise of Easter is to know that cynicism is not new. If you were living in Jerusalem on that first Holy Saturday, you would have had a right to be cynical. You could be cynical against religion because, after all, it was the religious authorities who plotted to have Jesus arrested and destroyed. You could be cynical against political leaders. When forced to decide, the governor Pontius Pilate chose to cave into the pressure of the crowds rather than trust his instincts that Jesus was an innocent man. You could even be cynical against those claiming to be followers of Jesus. After all it was his disciples who betrayed him, denied him, and ran away when Jesus needed them the most.
But Easter comes. You can justifiably be cynical against religious leaders, political officials, and so-called followers of Jesus, but you cannot be cynical towards Jesus. Jesus keeps his promises. Remember how he told you, the voice in the empty tomb said to the women who came looking for Jesus’ dead body. Easter is God proclaiming to the world through the resurrected Jesus that God has already overcome everything that would fragment us, demean us, or crush us. Evil, sin, and death have all been robbed of their ultimate power. Despite all evidence to the contrary love and life do win. Christ has triumphed. He is risen.
So, with Easter we are not talking about Pollyannaish happy endings. We are proclaiming freedom. Death, hate, heartache, and injustice may visit us. They do not own us. God and God’s resurrection promise do. Martin Luther taught about Jesus this way:
He has freed me from sin, death, and the power of the devil, not with silver and gold, but with his holy and precious blood and innocent suffering and death. All this he has done that I might be his own, live under him in his kingdom, and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as he is risen from the dead and lives and rules eternally. This is most certainly true!
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,
This Week’s Reflection for Lent - April 10, 2019
Sunday of the Passion approaches. Congregations who use the Revised Common Lectionary, as we do, will be presented with Luke’s version of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. On a day that is commonly known as Palm Sunday, there are no palms in Luke. People in the story do not have palms. They do not wave palms. They do not spread palms on the path on which Jesus rides into town. They spread their garments instead. There is another aspect that is unique to Luke. When the multitude of disciples are praising God and cheering Jesus’s entry, the Pharisees in the crowd beg Jesus to tell his disciples to knock it off. Jesus responds to the Pharisees, “If my followers stayed silent, the stones would cry out.” That’s right. The stones would cry out.
Guess what, folks. As people gather for worship on this first day of Holy Week in the year 2019, the stones are crying out. The land is crying out. Deluged by floods, the heartland is crying out. Migratory birds are crying out. Salmon and steelhead in the Pacific northwest are crying out. As the acidity rises in the oceans, the coral reefs are crying out. Yellow fin tuna and their cousins, as well as all sea life, are crying out. The forests in the west in constant danger of wild fires are crying out. The glaciers in Alaska’s inside passage are crying out. Mt. Kilimanjaro is crying out. And the billions in the global south living in abject poverty near bodies of water are crying out. As Paul once wrote in Romans 8, the whole creation is crying out.
So, what are followers of Jesus to do in the face of an entire planet that is suffering under the effects of climate change and with scientists painting an ominous picture of the future if we cannot dramatically change our ways and reduce our carbon footprint? I believe the primary answer lies in the reading from Philippians 2 appointed for Passion Sunday. Paul writes, “Have the same mind in you that was in Christ Jesus. He did not count his equality with God as something to be exploited. Rather he emptied himself.”
Our having an ecological future will not be the result of some top-down program or the result of something that somebody else does. The government or industry or politics or other schemes are not going to solve this. We have a shot if we have the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus who emptied himself for the sake of the world. Church, as we approach the most Holy of Weeks and relive the astonishing death and resurrection story of God’s solidarity with the earth and all of life, what is our response? For the sake of the world, can we as citizens of the most privileged and blessed people on the planet empty ourselves for the sake of the world? Can we empty ourselves for the sake of our children and grandchildren, for the sake of those living on the edge, and for the sake of all living things? Will we empty ourselves of our attitudes of entitlement, privilege, and sense of cosmic specialness that we believe sets us apart from the rest of humanity? Can we empty ourselves of over consumption and consumerism? Can we empty ourselves of the notion that the most important aspect of any society is to have a strong economy and instead recognize that some things that make for a strong economy are simply bad for the planet? Can we empty ourselves of our egos and pride and the need for the immortality symbols of supersized houses and the like? Can we empty ourselves and live simply so that this planet and the billions can simply live? Can we empty ourselves of looking for life in all the wrong places and find our life in Christ?
The church has been taking a beating (and rightfully so) because of the actions and voices of some who have committed terrible abuses, condemned persons of other faiths, devalued those identifying as LGBTQ, and stood against Christ-like mercy and kindness towards refugees and immigrants. Wouldn’t it be something totally unexpected – like a crucified Jesus being raised from the dead – if it turned out that it was the followers of Jesus who fostered a critical mass of people who emptied themselves and led the movement to regenerate the earth?
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,
This Week’s Reflection for Lent - April 3, 2019
What is the most ridiculously foolish thing you have ever done because you were crazy in love? I don’t mind admitting that there was this day in my life when I had an encounter with a certain young lady who would one day be my bride, and I was thunderstruck. In the following weeks while I was 400 miles away at another school, I did crazy things every day to communicate to her that I had fallen for her. In the pre-Internet-Facebook-cell phone-Twitter age where we have microwave communication, you either called using a rotary dial phone or you wrote real letters that went by what we call snail mail. But in those days, there was a way to get a message to someone quickly and it was called, “Air Mail/Special Delivery.” I wrote such a letter every day, walked it to the campus mail depot, bought the stamps, filled out the special delivery instructions, and the postman on the other end would personally deliver it to her. I got her attention!
But you know, that was such poor stewardship of resources. The cost of an air mail/special deliver letter was ten times the cost of a simple first-class stamp. I could have saved my money and been more prudent. In John’s gospel, chapter twelve, Judas Iscariot chastises Mary for being a really lousy steward. She had just taken a pound of costly perfume – that’s 16 ounces, for you who are familiar with purchasing perfume – and poured it all out on Jesus’ feet and wiped Jesus’ feet with her hair. Ridiculous! But that is the way that love operates. Mary wasn’t thinking about the value or what other ways she might use the pound of exquisite perfume. Knowing that there were powerful people seeking to kill Jesus, Mary loved him, and she wanted to show it. To heck with being a “good steward.”
I think that the way the church talks about stewardship is a bad idea. Stewardship talks too much about percentages, the percentage of one’s resources one ought to allot for certain expenditures, and the percentage one ought to allot to charity and other “causes.” It can be very clinical and sterile. If you listen to a lot of folks who talk stewardship, Mary should have taken 10% of her perfume and used it on Jesus’ feet, sold 10% of it and given the proceeds to the poor, and kept the other 80% for herself.
But love doesn’t work that way. And for all the ways we talk about being a good steward and use stewardship as a litmus test for how good of church folks we are, stewardship is not a spiritual gift. At best it’s a money or other resource management tool. On the other hand, generosity is a spiritual gift. Generosity doesn’t operate from percentages and clinical formulae. Generosity flows from love and the joy of pouring out to another something of value. God does not want our stewardship. God wants our generosity, a generosity that is willing to empty everything we have and are for the sake world. After all, Jesus emptied himself, withholding nothing, and our call is simple – to be the hands, feet, and heart of Jesus, pouring ourselves out for the sake of the world.
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,
This Week’s Reflection for Lent - March 27, 2019
The word, “grace,” captures the ground zero starting point for our relationship with God. In its essence, grace is definitive of God’s unconditional, unrelenting, extravagant, and tenacious love and favor towards us. It was the energy that initiated the big bang and God’s first recorded speech in scripture, “Let there be light.” It is most fully disclosed in Jesus the Christ, his life, death, and resurrection. As my friend, Jacqueline Bussie, wrote in her fabulous recent release, Love Without Limits, there are no exceptions to grace. Yet, in our humanness we have reimagined God in our own image and somehow have convinced ourselves that God must think, act, and love like we do. Perhaps the oldest heresy to contaminate our faith and hijack the message of the risen Christ is that of a transactional God.
The transactional God is like this: God will love me if I do good things. God will punish me if I disobey God. When I am having a really hard time because of the consequences of my own choices and behavior, I must do everything I can to regain God’s favor.
In the 15th chapter of Luke, Jesus takes on the religious leaders who tenaciously cling to and protect the notion of a transactional God. They are outraged that Jesus welcomes “sinners” and “eats with them.” In response to their objections, Jesus tells three parables in a row. The parables serve as windows into the heart of God. The first has to do with a shepherd who will leave ninety-nine sheep and go hunt for the one lost sheep who ran astray. This short story ends not only with the shepherd finding the lost sheep but also with the unrestrained joy associated with it. The second parable is similar with a woman who will not relent until she finds just one lost coin that is lost. Then there is the parable of one of the most familiar stories in all of scriptures. It is the story of a father who has two sons. The older is incredibly obedient and responsible. The younger is not. He takes off and makes a complete mess of his life, bringing great shame to his father and family, and ends up in dire straits as the consequences of his actions. In desperation he decides to come home.
When the lost son comes home and the father runs to him, embraces him, and showers on him extravagant love, it is tempting to assume that it is the father’s transactional response to the young man who must have said or done something to earn his father’s good graces. Nothing could be further from the truth. Before the kid ever decided to come home, the father loved him… without limits. It did not matter what the son had done. The father’s love was greater than the son’s shameful behavior. It is the same with us. God’s love is stronger than anything we might do to hurt God, others, and even ourselves.
In this day of name calling, labeling people as our enemies, hate-crimes, and shameful treatment of refugees everywhere, we, as the ones who bear the mark of the cross of Christ on our foreheads, are called to live differently – to think and act like God. And that means that we too offer grace and love to all people… without limits.
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,
This Week’s Reflection for Lent - March 20, 2019
On the evening of April 20, 1999, the first question Catherine Crier asked me after I was introduced as a guest on her television show was this: “Reverend Barger, would you please tell the American public why God would allow what happened today.” The reason for my being on her show, albeit remotely from my location in Littleton, Colorado, was because I had been the first non-law enforcement responder to the event known as “Columbine.” I actually arrived at the school at the same time as the first officers. When I was asked if I would appear on the Crier show, I thought she wanted to get a first-hand report of the terrifying and heart-breaking day at the school. It did not even cross my mind that I might be being set up for a theological question because I was a pastor.
Her question is a question for the ages. Why did God allow Columbine? Why did God allow the Holocaust? Why did God allow the hate crime against worshipping Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand? Volumes of books and articles have been written about God and human suffering. Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote perhaps the most well know book, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People. Timothy Keller, a Presbyterian pastor in New York City, wrote another well-received book, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering. For many of us the question has not always been asked only in the face of ghastly evil. It has been generally been more personal. Why did God allow my cancer to come back? Could God not have stopped my dad from killing himself? Let’s face it. It is probable that at one time or another we have all asked such questions.
For those of us who worship in a congregation that follows the Revised Common Lectionary the lesson from Luke 13:1-9 for the 3rd Sunday in Lent raises the question of shocking human suffering of innocent people. Perhaps in no other context are such questions apropos than in this Season of Lent when we are drawn into renewal of our baptisms and, at the same time, are journeying with Jesus to Jerusalem through the gospel texts we encounter. The two are interconnected – the suffering that awaits Jesus in Jerusalem and our baptisms into his death and resurrection. The question of being the victim of undeserved evil is not foreign to God. Whenever we ask the “Why?” question, two things are helpful as persons of faith. One, life is not fair. Two, the betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion of Jesus on Good Friday represents unspeakable evil at its worst.
We do not know why bad things happen to good people, why innocent people suffer or why life can be terribly unfair. We do know what God’s response to it is. It is the first sermon ever proclaimed. Jesus is risen. The tomb is empty. God has raised Jesus from the dead. In Jesus, God has already entered our most desperate stations in life, into the darkest places of human existence, and into complete sorrow and despair, and he has risen beyond all of it. And because he entered it and is risen beyond it, God has already defeated everything that would cheapen us, fragment us, or crush us. Whether we are traveling with Jesus to Jerusalem or on our own journey through our own trials, we know the outcome. Love and life win.
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,
This Week’s Reflection for Lent – March 13, 2019
During this Season of Lent, our worship begins with these words, “Remembering the astonishing promises of God in Baptism, we begin in the name of the Father, and of the Son +, and of the Holy Spirit.” To which we all respond with, “Amen,” meaning “so be it!”
The Season of Lent is a time to reflect on our baptisms in order to draw us more deeply into an awareness of just how astonishing God’s love and claim on our lives is and how that claim is a daily call to see, dream, aspire, and live as children of God grasped by God’s unshakeable love. During Lent we sing of God abounding in steadfast love, which is a translation of the biblical Hebrew word, hesed. Hesed describes our God as always faithful to us even when we are not, even when we are even rebellious or recalcitrant. Even when we reject God all together! The Apostle Paul spoke about such love when he wrote that such love, “bears all things, believes all things, believes all things, and endures all things,” (I Cor. 13:7) and that everything else that may matter to us may one day die, but such love will not – not ever! Paul would later write in Romans that nothing could ever separate us from the love of God.
The word, “grace,” encapsulates the various dimensions of such love. It is God’s love and favor toward us that is unmerited, undeserved, and comes without our even asking. When Marin Luther taught that we should daily remember our baptisms, and even make the sign of the cross on our forehead when we do, and if we have water with which to do that even better, he was asking that we begin each day aware of God’s grace. Think about it. We were born into this world as an act of pure grace. One day we weren’t and the next day we were. We did not ask to be born! So, every day is a gift of pure grace. And if we were to stumble this day, if we were to act in ways that are displeasing to God, we will awake the next day still grasped by God’s grace.
On this coming Sunday, the 2nd Sunday in Lent, we are presented with vivid portraits of grace. There is Abraham with whom God made a unilateral and unconditional covenant with many promises attached. He asked Abraham to trust those promises even when present circumstances would cause him to doubt. We will also find Jesus being threatened by the powers at be to abandon his mission of love and fidelity to us all. They threaten Jesus with death. It doesn’t matter. God’s love for us is stronger than death itself.
Long before we ever chose God, God chose us, and that choice is forever!
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,
This Week’s Reflection for Lent – March 7, 2019
Yesterday’s ancient words for Ash Wednesday were spoken on us all. Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. It is a truth-telling statement. The death rate has always been and still is one death per person. Whether one is six years old or ninety-six, one day we will all return to dust. This reality should be a reminder to us. This day that we are given is precious. Life is precious. Because life is precious, we should not spend one moment of it consumed by the wiles of the Evil One.
The biblical authors knew of the existence of evil forces that influence us, sometimes even consuming us. The authors personified what they experienced into the reality of Satan or the Devil as he is known in the New Testament. This coming Sunday, the 1st Sunday in Lent, we are presented with Luke’s version of Jesus’ temptation by the Devil in the wilderness. Luke, Matthew, and Mark are all consistent in reporting the temptation of Jesus as immediately following his baptism by John in the Jordan River.
The late Walter Bouman used to teach that only those who have been seized by the promises of God expressed in baptism can really be tempted. In this sense, temptation is not really about caving into something enticing that one knows is inappropriate or something mischievous, like sneaking a cookie out of the jar. In essence, to be tempted is to turn one’s trust toward something other than the promises of God. When we trust in wealth or power more than in God to provide life meaning, when we trust in holding grudges more than the grace of God, when we become jealous or entitled or petty rather than trusting in God’s goodness for each one of us, we have been trapped by the Tempter.
Jesus withstood the astonishing temptations of the Devil in the wilderness because of his love for you and for all of creation. God sent Jesus with a mission – to take back what belongs to God, and everything belongs to God, including you! Nothing – not the enormous temptations of the Evil One, not the lies of those who had him arrested, not a trial, not even death by crucifixion – would work to get him off mission. He trusted the One who sent him. He knew that the worst thing that could possibly happen to him would not be the last thing. He knew that the One who sent him would not abandon him in death, and we all know that on the third day God raised him up.
And God will not abandon you. Through the changes and chances of life, we are sometimes tempted towards doubt, discouragement, or despair. But God is faithful and calls us each day to trust, to live each day fully, and to allow the goodness of God to bring about wholeness and joy in each of us through the peace and promises of the risen Jesus.
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,
STIR UP YOUR POWER
Those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus and participants in the Body of Christ as God’s mission to and for the world have to be deeply troubled on this eve of the advent of Advent. Everyday, I ask my wife this question, “What has happened to our country?” Almost each day, I ask colleagues, “Where is the church in all this?” As Advent dawns, God has much to say about “all this.” Are we listening?
I was a stranger and you tear-gassed me.
Earlier this week we saw the pictures of US border guards using tear gas on children whose threat to us was that they came with their families seeking asylum from the living hell of conditions in their own country. So how does God speak to us about this? Through the story of there being no room at the inn? Through the story of the holy family fleeing into Egypt to escape King Herod who wanted to kill the baby Jesus?
I was hungry and you bombed me
Last week, Save the Children reported that as many as 85,000 children have died in Yemen over the last three years from starvation. These deaths are in addition to deaths inflicted by the Saudi assault on Yemen with US supplied arms. Experts say that Yemen represents the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet with perhaps 14,000,000 on the brink of starvation, but hey, the Saudis are giving us good oil prices!
A voice was heard in Ramah,
Wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
She refused to be consoled,
Because they are no more.
- Matthew 2:18
I was in need and you deported me
Yesterday, U.S. officials reported that they had deported Samuel Oliver-Bruno back to Mexico. He leaves behind a wife with a serious illness (lupus with heart complications) and a son. Samuel had lived in the basement of a NC church for 11 months while working with an immigration lawyer to get his undocumented status legalized. Under a ruse created by ICE, Samuel went to an appointment with immigration officials thinking that his process for residency would be finalized. ICE arrested him. As the van carrying him tried to leave the facility, the church’s pastor and other congregants surrounded the van, prayed, and sang hymns. Eventually the pastor and 27 church members were arrested, and Samuel was taken away.
there are still distinctions and hate is up
The FBI reports that hate crimes are up 17% in this country over last year, including a 23% increase in religious hate, and a 37% increase in anti-Semitism. Duke University has a mural honoring the victims at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Last week, someone came and painted a red swastika on it.
The question persists for me. What is going on in our country?
Advent begins with this prayer:
Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come. By your merciful protection alert us to the threatening dangers of our sins,
and redeems us for your life of justice, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
stir up our hearts. stir up our minds.
Alerting us to the threatening dangers of our sin, Advent should stir us up. Advent tells us of a God who sides with the poor, the powerless, and the disenfranchised. Advent tells us of Jesus’ cousin, John, coming and proclaiming a need for wholesale repentance towards justice and kindness in the light of the coming One. Advent tells us of a teenage virgin from Nazareth whose words known as the Magnificat are put to music in Marty Haugen’s Holden Evening Prayer in this way:
Great and mighty are you, O Holy One,
Strong is your kindness evermore.
How you favor the weak and lowly one,
Humbling the proud of heart.
You have cast the mighty down from their thrones,
And uplifted the humble of heart,
You have filled the hungry with wondrous things,
And left the wealthy no part.
Church, are you listening? Are you paying attention? It is one thing for the things going on in our world today to trouble you and to challenge you. It is another for the words and themes of Advent to so move you into being the church God has always had in mind that they stir you up to side with God for the sake of the world. And that is the mission of the church.
In Advent hope,
THE LIST
A STARTLING CONVERSATION
Haitians obtaining visas to the United States is a hard task. But every once in a while the application is successful. Such is the case with a recent visa we (that is, the Haitian Timoun Foundation) were able to obtain for a pharmacist who will come to the United States to participate in training as part of a project, jointly sponsored and led by the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Colorado. The project is to determine the efficacy of drugs being sold in Haiti. There is a belief that, like so many other products dumped into Haiti, the drugs lack authenticity. They are either expired and have lost their punch, or, much worse, they are fake.
That this young pharmacist was able to get a visa is somewhat of a miracle, especially under the immigration climate that now exists in the U.S. But she got one! It is the dream of almost every Haitian to emigrate to the United States, but there is also a fear. A somewhat frequent refrain in conversations in Haiti about going to the United States is this: “It is very dangerous.” That’s right, people in Haiti, who once suffered under the ruthless dictatorship of the Duvaliers, who have experienced numerous coups, where there are often demonstrations that sometimes turn violent and who have endured earthquakes, hurricanes, cholera, and other disasters, speak of the dangers of going to the United States. “You could get murdered.”
And they are right. The likelihood of being murdered in the United States greatly exceeds that possibility in Haiti.
USAMERICA’S GUN CULTURE CONFIRMED
There is a new ranking of gun deaths in the world. See: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/theres-a-new-global-ranking-of-gun-deaths-heres-where-the-u-s-stands. Data from 2016 show that half of the world’s gun deaths occurred in six countries. The list:
Brazil
United States
Mexico
Venezuela
Colombia
Guatemala
There is also another list. This list ranks the 20 most violent countries in terms of per capita deaths by firearms. The United States is on this list. That’s right, in addition to the countries listed above, the United States joins countries like El Salvador, Afghanistan, and Honduras on the list. (BTW, Haiti is not on the list.)
HOLDING UP THE MIRROR
I recently concluded a 3-part series of blog posts on the topic of USAmerica’s Gun Culture and the Church’s Witness. In the second installment of that series I presented facts that support the notion that we have an idolatrous relationship with guns. See: https://www.rightspirit.org/blog/gunculturepart2.
This relationship is an addiction. And the thwarted efforts to bring some sort of reasonable gun control reform reinforce the stubbornness of the addiction. Competent therapists posit that effective therapy is when the mirror can be held up so that the patient can see one’s self as one really is and the patient is motivated enough to change beliefs and behaviors.
I am not going to rehearse again here the arguments that were presented in the series or revisit the fine blog post by Pastor Lorne Hlad, a veteran deployed on two tours in Iraqi. See: https://www.rightspirit.org/blog/2018/5/29/conflict-peace.
I am simply holding up the mirror again in hope that it might refuel passion for change and may, just maybe, change some minds.
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb.
TIME FOR THE CHURCH TO BE THE CHURCH - OUR GUN CULTURE AND THE CHURCH'S WITNESS - PART III
It has been almost 12 weeks since the sound of gunfire at Noblesville West Middle School…
It has been almost 12 weeks since the sound of gunfire at Noblesville West Middle School in Indiana. USAmerica has gotten a summer reprieve from the all-too-frequent school shootings, but schools are reopening across the country now. It is in this season that I offer this last reflection – at least for now – on our gun culture and the role of the church. I pray that I am wrong, but history teaches us that there is yet more heartbreak on the horizon and the response of offering “thoughts and prayers.”
THE DEATH OF GUN CONTROL DEBATE
WHAT WILL THE AUTOPSY SHOW?
On June 19, 2015, British columnist Dan Hodges tweeted this:
In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the gun control debate.
Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.
There are many who would say today that Dan Hodges was correct. Only the most optimistic would still hold to the notion that there is still time for the kind of sweeping change that would end our idolatrous relationship with guns and transform our violent culture. This is not to belittle the inspiring efforts of the students from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School and their nationally known activist and prolific tweeter, Cameron Kasky. They fostered the national MARCH FOR OUR LIVES movement. They took on people in high places. Since the Parkland, Florida massacre there have been 50 new gun laws enacted in various states, fourteen of them led by Republican governors. Bump stocks have been banned. In some cases, the age to buy a gun has been raised to 21. Some have restricted the use of high magazine weapons. Dick’s Sporting Goods no longer sells assault rifles, high magazine guns, and to persons under 21 years of age. A few others have similarly followed suit.
But there has still been no nationally embraced status confessionis that has led to true game-changing legislation. We have nibbled around the edges but have not gotten to the heart of the matter. There has been nothing even remotely close to the radically bold action taken by Australia. In 1996, Australia was so moved by a mass shooting that soon legislation was enacted that worked to change the culture. The government bought back guns in circulation and there have been no mass shootings in Australia in the last 22 years. After the Parkland shootings, A. Odysseus Patrick, an Op-Ed contributor in Sydney, Australia wrote this:
The Australian model won’t work in the United States. Here’s why:
We Australians have a profoundly different relationship with weapons.
Americans love guns. We’re scared of them.
THE BEAT GOES ON
In the first 23 weeks of 2018’s school season from January 1st through Memorial Day, there were 30 school shootings in this country. That’s 1.3 shootings per week. This summer has also been one of the most violent in recent history in terms of deaths by firearms, but that reality has been obscured by the other headline news – immigration issues and the separation of families, the ongoing investigation led by Mueller, the coming midterm elections, and the non-stop circus in the White House.
Though the gun debate has been on the back page for a while, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that we can somehow expect a reprieve from the heartache of gun violence now that schools are starting. Even though we might be able to learn something from Australia’s playbook, such as a national gun registry, a 30 day wait period, and a ban on assault and military-style weapons, it is not going to happen. The NRA is suddenly not going to develop a conscience. Politicians will not grow a spine, do their job and make our country safer, especially for children.
GOD’S MISSION HAS A CHURCH
I concluded the previous blogpost in this series on our gun culture and the role of the church with these words:
The alliance of faith, patriotism, and guns is not of Jesus. It is of Constantine.
The role of the church in our idolatrous gun-worshipping culture is one of claiming and living out of our identity and calling. God’s mission has always been to heal and bless the entire world – all peoples – and that mission of God has a church. Thus, a little discussion on ecclesiology is useful here.
From the time that the women ran from the empty tomb and first proclaimed, “Jesus is risen,” the church understood itself to be in the world but not off it – an authentic contrast society. With the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost they clearly understood themselves as witnesses to a new reality, or as the author of Luke-Acts posits it, the church lives as witness to the resurrection. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus from the dead, God has entered the most desperate stations of human existence and has overcome as fait accompli everything that would fragment us, cheapen us, or crush us. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead both owns and gives life to the church, and the church then lives as the continuation of Jesus in the world. It is the Body of Christ called and sent to bring hope, healing, and life to all.
As the church got going it knew that as the church it was always confronted with two stories, and only one of them could be true. Only one was worthy of one’s allegiance. There was the story of empire and the emperor as Lord and story that belongs to the church – the gospel of the crucified and risen messiah with Jesus as Lord. The two stories could not be more different. One story is driven by a narrative DNA traced back to Cain killing his brother Abel and has never been resolved. It is a story of the quest for power, wealth, division, and the use of force to achieve what one desires. The other is about a God who so loves the world that this God comes to us as a defenseless baby declaring amnesty to all – one who was so radically inclusive and extravagant with grace that the powers at hand crucified him. But God raised him up as Lord and Messiah of all and authenticating the way of Jesus. In short, there is the way of the world, and the way of Jesus. One offers false hope and security; the other has the final word where love and life win.
The church persisted in its mission of distinct witness to the world and loyalty to Jesus as Lord, even under atrocious persecution propagated by the empire, until Emperor Constantine experienced his quasi-conversion to Christianity in 313 AD. Believing that the Christian God would be good for the Roman Empire and for him, Constantine brought about the Christianization of the Roman Empire. In the Christianization, the two distinct stories of the church and empire became one. The church lived in service to Constantine and the empire’s agenda. Just about every movement that has claimed to know the will of God, certain of God’s blessing on their agenda, and willing to use force to achieve or protect it finds its roots in the Constantinian synthesis. So it is with God blessing the individual right to bear arms.
THE CALL FOR COURAGEOUS ADAPTIVE CHURCH LEADERS
An adaptive leader can adapt to changing circumstances; however, the defining attribute of an adaptive leader is that she or he is able to re-story persons and have them adapt to a different reality, assumptions, and set of loyalties. The transformational work of an adaptive leader and the role of the church is to so re-story persons that they abandon their loyalty to the story of the world and allow themselves to be owned and inspired by the story of the church. In biblical terminology, it means to repent. To repent means to unlearn and abandon long-held positions, worldviews, and loyalties and to relearn the peace and promise of the church’s story and the way of Jesus.
UNLEARING AND RELEARNING
As an authentic witness to the church’s identity and calling, consider the following:
1) The teachings of Jesus are incompatible with a gun culture. (i.e. Matthew 5:5, 5:21ff, and many more.)
2) Followers of Jesus do not demonize anyone. We love our enemies and do good to those who want to hurt us. (i.e. Matthew 5:43ff and more.)
3) USAmerica’s deep loyalty to individualism is not a biblical value. In the way of Jesus, community is valued. Every person is a unique individual, created in God’s image, but the gifts of the individual are in service to building up the community. (i.e. I Corinthians 12 & Ephesians 4.)
4) In the way of Jesus, the ONE has infinite value – the one widow, the one blind man, the one leper, the one outcast, the one child, and the one sheep for whom the leader will abandon all to search, find, and restore. Following the way of Jesus, we cannot just say that one student injured or killed in a school shooting is simply collateral damage in service to the right to bear arms. It is because of the vulnerability of the one that arms should be laid down. (i.e. Luke 15.)
5) USAmerica’s fascination with individual “rights” has no biblical foundation. Rather than speak about “rights” as a foundation of citizenship, the way of Jesus points to agape love. (i.e. John 13:34 and many others).
6) In the way of Jesus there is an a priori orientation not toward the most powerful but toward the most vulnerable. (i.e. Luke 6:20-26 and Matthew 25:31-46.)
IF NOT THE CHURCH, THEN WHO?
It is the church and its gospel story that is uniquely called for the transformation of the culture from one that loves guns to one that loves people. Yet claiming this mission has its perils in speaking the seemingly strange ways of Jesus in our highly polarized culture. Pastors and other leaders have been maligned, persecuted, lied about, threatened, and even been removed because they dared to speak a “Word from the Lord.” But do we have another choice?
When the church gathers and celebrates the Eucharist, it is not a private event. It is our own witness to ourselves and to the world. We proclaim through words and our movements that, as Isaiah 25 writes, one day God will throw a party for all people, and all means all. God will swallow up suffering and death and tear down everything that divides us – gender, nationalities, political affiliations, social and economic differences and replace it with dignity and love and life for all people. So, if what we proclaim and do when we gather for worship is true, let’s get on with it now!
Now is the time for the church to be the church – on every corner, on every street, in every venue – for the healing, blessing, and the transformation of our world. This is the hope for the world!
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,
15 POSITIVES ABOUT HAVING CHRONIC MYELOID LEUKEMIA
No. 15 Well-meaning people will tell you, “I looked that up! If you are going to have cancer, that is a good one to have!”
No. 14 You get to impress people with your new vocabulary, grasp of genetics and targeted therapies. I mean, who else talks about a tyrosine kinase, or a tyrosine kinase inhibiter, or the translocation of the abl gene from Chromosome 9 with the bcr gene with Chromosome 22 that creates the Philadelphia Chromosome?
No. 13 Not only can you brag about how unique you are in having this rare cancer, people at the cocktail party will not believe you when you tell them the cost of your daily targeted chemo. The Rx price for 30 days of imatinib mesylate (generic for Gleevec) at the Emory Pharmacy is $14,212.72. No. That’s not a typo.
No. 12 You get to meet a lot of nice people, make friends, and witness great courage at the cancer center. Weekly blood draws make you a “regular.”
No. 11 You now have a new interest on a new subject and can keep up with the latest research on cancer and the search for a cure.
No. 10 You have life-long friends who surface. Even though James Taylor is from Chapel Hill, you can embrace the song, “You’ve got a friend.” The words, “I’ll pray for you” have a new impact on you.
No. 9 Holding hands with the love of your life and going on a walk together becomes especially precious.
No. 8 You learn what you should have always known – your children deeply love you and have your back.
No. 7 You get to see your granddaughter take as much delight in your wbc falling as your grandson does in seeing Ozzie Albies hit a home run.
No. 6 You have a lot of those days that Jimmy V described as “a great day.”
No. 5 There is a profound existential impact to words you’ve frequently said: The tomb is empty. This is the day the Lord has made. This day today is not a dress rehearsal for another day.
No. 4 When you have an embarrassing “senior moment” you can now blame it on “chemo brain.”
No. 3 You are free to give no energy to the superficial.
No. 2 As an Atlanta Braves fan you can take special delight in the fight to eliminate a chromosome named “Philadelphia.”
No. 1 You can give thanks that you have health insurance. You can pray for and work towards universal health care for all. You can give thanks that there are talented people who dedicate their lives to medical oncology and hematology and that there is a global full-court press being put on by scientists, pharmaceutical companies, cancer centers, and generous donors to find a cure for all cancers. May it come soon!
This was written for everyone who is battling cancer or has a loved one who is. In the words of the late great Jimmy V, “Don’t give up! Don’t ever give up!”
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,
