Will Our Faith Save Us?
America Opening Back Up
A week from today the national social distancing initiative from the White House ends. Some states, like mine, have already begun to open. Others soon will be easing restrictions. Because the hastiness to begin opening is economically and politically driven, health care gurus are aghast. Yet, there are loud voices declaring, “We’ve got to get this country opened up again. America was not built be to shut down.” And, “Americans are very resilient people. We are ready to bounce back, and when we do, it will be breathtaking! The greatest and strongest economy ever!”
So, are we all ready to bounce back? Those of you who live in my state, Georgia, are you ready to hustle over to LA Fitness and get back to normal? Anyone? Buehler?
Questions
A few weeks ago, when social distancing and stay-at-home directives began throughout the country, I had a conversation with a colleague who asked about a study done on Abiding Hope Church in Littleton Colorado in the period following the Columbine High Schools shootings. (More on that report later in this blog.) This colleague is among the most gifted and respected pastoral leaders in the ELCA. The reason for his inquiry and the subject of our conversation was out of concern for the resilience of our congregational and church leaders on the front line of ministry. It has now been over a month since we had that conversation, and the carnage of this microscopic COVID-19 terrorist continues to dramatically spread. The daily reports not only tell us that the USA leads the world in deaths; they also remind us that we are way behind other developed countries in testing and contact tracing, things health experts tell us are necessary to even begin to think about loosening stay-at-home orders. The escalating daily toll is such that by this time next week, it is conceivable that we could be approaching 1 million reported cases and 50,000 deaths. At the same time, another Great Depression could be on the horizon if something is not done to restart America’s economic engines and get people back to work and buying things.
That America is beginning to open again does not mean that people are not wary and deeply concerned. I will not speculate on your challenges and fears, but I will share mine and believe there will be some resonance with you. These are in the form of questions:
Despite what the politicians are saying should we not continue the shelter-in-place? Will I get the virus? It is highly contagious and can attack in stealth from those who have no symptoms. If I get sick, will I die? I am in the at-risk category. Will our life savings go down the tubes? What about our friends and their economic health? People are losing their jobs. What about my family and friends in Haiti? What about our little church? Can it survive with reduced giving? How long will this last? When will I be able to hug my children and grandchildren? When will I be able to work out at the Emory outdoor pool complex? When will I be able to go fishing again? When can we travel again? My grand niece’s grand wedding at the end of May has already been reduced to a private ceremony of a handful of people; what about a destination wedding at which I am the officiant on the coast of North Carolina in July? What about the promised trips we have planned with two grandsons? What about rescheduling the family trip to the UK that had to be cancelled? What about the planned trip to the beach with my lifelong college buddies? When will my beloved Wolfpack take the field again?
Resilience by Definition
Resilience means the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. It suggests a degree of toughness and grit. When describing the elasticity of an object, resilience means the ability to bounce back or spring back into shape.
Does anybody believe that we will quickly bounce back? There will be some that do, and God bless them. But for me, you absolutely cannot have the deaths that we have had, the profound grief and troubling questions triggered by each death, the trauma experienced by families and health care workers, the devastation in nursing homes, the massive economic losses and peril of many, and the politically-motivated finger-pointing and scapegoating and expect to have a quick bounce back. Perhaps most importantly, if this microscopic terrorist is left to roam without a vaccine, I simply do not see how we can quickly bounce back. The virus does not respond to pep talks and hyperbolic rhetoric.
The Abiding Hope Study
The congregation I once served in Littleton, Colorado was a “ground zero” congregation with the April 20, 1999 shootings at Columbine High School. At the time, it was the worst school shooting in American history. And to be clear, in no way am I even trying to remotely suggest that the current national carnage and “Columbine” are somehow peer events. When Johns Hopkins University reports some 27,000 deaths over the last two weeks, that is the equivalent of 1,800 Columbines. But death is death, grief is grief, and shock is shock; so, the study done of Abiding Hope is instructive.
Within a few weeks after the shootings, experts from Lutheran Disaster Response gathered ground zero congregational care givers for an all-day retreat. They began their equipping of us for the landscape that would lie ahead by saying, “In two years, none of you will be here.” They went on to say that with every community disaster, especially one as shocking as a high school shooting, congregations implode, and their pastors and other ministers move to new pastures. The profound grief, the sea of need, the daily amplification in the media, the incriminations and misdirected anger, the lawsuits, the theological questions, other powerful dynamics associated with communal and individual grief, and the inability to escape the non-stop fallout inflict great stress on congregations and their ministers. In Littleton, the prognostication of the experts turned out to be true. Congregations imploded. Staffs left. Some still suffer from PTSD.
It was not true for Abiding Hope. The congregation deeply grieved and still holds countless stories of the individual toll it took on its members, but it also thrived. Some would argue that it was resilient, but I prefer today to say that it had the capacity to weather extreme adversity. The vitality of Abiding Hope after the shootings drew such attention from many places that think-tanks and doctoral students from different locales wanted to study the congregation. One study conducted five years later (see A New and Right Spirit, pg. 35) concluded that Abiding Hope weathered and thrived not because of it had a unique “emotional health” per se but rather because of “theological health.” The theology embedded in the congregation was a result of intentional congregational cultural architecture. It was a culture developed whereby the congregation’s members were found to be deeply grasped by the gospel of God’s crucified Messiah, Jesus, who would not stay dead because he loves us. Efforts over the years to shape and form the congregation through liturgy, congregational practices, and even the actual architectural construction of the worship space, forged the congregation into a worldview seen through the lens of the empty tomb.
The Abiding Hope form of resilience was not a quick fix. The 21st anniversary of the shootings were last week, and I still weep. My wife knows that the days surrounding the anniversary have always been difficult for me, as it also is with her. We, who shared the Columbine experience together, communicate with each other. Even as I write these words, my eyes are moist. But my eyes are also moist because the theology of the cross tells us that Jesus too took a bullet in the halls of Columbine on that day, that Jesus has joined in our own suffering and alienation and has risen beyond it. My eyes are moist because I believe in the astonishing promises of God wrought by the resurrection. Not only do love and life finally win but also Jesus has me in his grip right now. Because the tomb is empty, we weather adversity because of a lifelong orientation of courage and vision where we “fight the good fight and finish the race” (2 Timothy 4:7). What was it that Paul once wrote? “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us…” (Romans 5:3-4a)
Bounce Back to What?
In Luke’s Gospel, ten lepers approach him and cry for mercy (Luke 17:11-19). Lepers suffered from a grossly disfiguring skin disease with the added pain of being isolated in leper colonies and losing all sense of their human dignity. So, when they cry out to Jesus, they need more than just a dermatologist. They need restoration and deep healing from the physical and emotional toll being a leper. In this encounter, Jesus keeps good social distancing and directs them to go show themselves to the priests. It was the priests and not the Mayo Clinic who determined if one was clean. The story says that while they were on their way, they were indeed miraculously cleansed. But only one of them, a Samaritan, decides to not go to the priest but rather to return, gripped by profound gratitude and shouting hallelujahs at Jesus’ feet. This prompts Jesus to ask a rhetorical question about the whereabouts of the other nine. The story ends with Jesus declaring to this one cleansed person, “Get up and go your way, your faith has made you well.” The word for “made well” is a from the Greek, sōdszō, which is often translated “has saved.” Its form is in the perfect, active, indicative mood, which means that the being made well or saved is an accomplished fact.
This pronouncement Jesus made raises a question: saved from what? From what was this one cleansed leper saved? Were not all ten cleansed? The answer partly lies in the whereabouts of the nine. They are hustling down to see the priests – to offer up the same old sacrifices and go through the same worn out rituals so that they can bounce back to their business-as-usual lives just as before. Obviously, Jesus saw something in the one that was more than just his dermatological cure. Perhaps he saw that the one cleansed giving thanks also bore the marks of some good cardiology and ophthalmology work – a new heart and new eyes. Maybe Jesus is commending him for his faith saving him from going back to business-as-usual because he has been impacted by the living Messiah. “Go,” Jesus says to him. But, go where?
Where do we go when we emerge from the present state of things? Back to business-as-usual? Or will this eye-opening and heart-rending experience of seeing how COVID-19 has exposed the severe brokenness of the American “system” send us to new places? Will the good lessons learned from doing church differently in these days send us to imagining new ways of being church? I pray that our faith – our faith in the gospel of the risen Messiah – will give us the capacity to endure and to be of good courage during these days. I pray that this adversity has been such a great teacher that we emerge so differently that Jesus can say to us, “Your faith has saved you.”
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,
The Necessary and Possible Church - Part 2
All in This Together
Could the circumstances in which we begin “The Great Three Days” in the life of the church be more ominous? A microscopic organism that is about one thousandth of an inch in size has brought the planet to its knees. As such, there is one saying that is perfectly true. We are all in this together. As the hourly reports of rising infections, deaths, and the heart-wrenching stories of people – not just statistics – come at us, we realize that the microscopic terrorist has no conscience or boundaries. It will attack persons of any gender, age, social location, nationality, or ethnicity; and, as with everything else, the poor and marginalized are the most vulnerable.
Multiple times a day, I stop and pray for the health workers, grocery store clerks, mail deliverers, and others engaging in essential activities, as well as those in political leadership of both parties. But at night when I put my head on my pillow, I pray this very familiar prayer that I personalize:
Dear Lord, to whom my heart is open, who knows my desires, and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of my heart that I might perfectly love you…
And then I go through a familiar recitation of all the things from which I ask to be cleansed – my outrage and anger at the politicization of this pandemic, the lack of our health system and workers having what they need, and the blaming and scapegoating by people who should be leading us. I ask that my heart be cleansed from fear I feel for those I love, for my family, for the fragile and elderly in our little church, for our country and especially the poor in Haiti, who are exposed and vulnerable like no other. And then I move to the whole purpose of being cleansed from such thoughts and feelings: that I might perfectly love you… Lord, let my anger, outrage, and fear be transformed into love for you – a love that translates into a love and compassion for all people in these historic days.
The Necessary Church
In my blog two weeks ago, I began to address The Necessary and Possible Church by first attending to the possible church. It was New Testament scholar par excellence, Mark Allan Powell, who took the seemingly conflicting biblical positions of the whereabouts of Jesus and proffered the following: The presence of Jesus makes the church possible. The absence of Jesus makes the church necessary.
We need a story bigger than our politics, grander than our heroic relief efforts, and more powerful than the fear and uncertainty that have grasped all of us. It is precisely the church – yes, that frequently-criticized church, and often rightly so – who is the steward of such a story. It is a story that transcends the present day and yet lives in this day so that we might be grasped by its light and hope and have the courage to be light and hope ourselves in a time we are clearly at the mercy of things beyond our control. It is about a crucified messiah who would not stay dead because he loves us. For this reason, God’s stubborn love for all of us, God gave the world the church.
It does not take a whole lot of imagination to draw parallels that expose the human condition between the night in which Jesus was betrayed and living in a pandemic where the experts are telling us to “Get ready for Pearl Harbor.” Each carry more than enough dysfunction and evil mischief among political and religious leaders. And if we look closely enough today, we might recognize the same evil, fear, and self-preservation that drove those closest to Jesus to betray, deny, and abandon him. Little wonder that the story the necessary church tells was very early labeled “foolishness.” It has the audacity to proclaim that God’s tenacious love for the whole cosmos is infinitely bigger than our human willfulness, rebellion, and even death itself.
The Triumph of God
On Sunday the church proclaims, Christ is risen, alleluia! It is to proclaim the triumph of God over everything that would fragment us, cheapen us, or crush us. The future is in the hands of the One who raised Jesus from the dead. COVID-19 and what it has done to our lives, to the economy, and what it has exposed in our inadequate political and health care systems will not have the final word. God and God’s love and the life that God gives again and again and again will.
To be clear, Easter is not a one-shot deal where a tragedy in ancient Palestine – rejecting and crucifying God’s Messiah – happens to have a happy ending. It’s not a feel-good story that has become an annual springtime ritual to be celebrated and then forgotten until next year. Though there is a lot of feel-good emotions attached with the celebration of Easter, the proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection and its implications is an objective word that comes at us no matter how we feel. Whether we are confused, angry, doubting, depressed, fearful, or grieving, Easter yet comes to us as an unconditional promise by a God who will not quit on us.
A Gospel of Resilience
When Jesus’ followers encountered the risen Jesus and the Holy Spirit opened to them its meaning (cf. Acts 2), they were forced to re-imagine their lives and the future to which they were called. In one sense, nothing had really changed after Jesus was raised. The human predicament persists. There is no quick fix for all that is wrong, unfair, and unpredictable. Yet, everything has changed because we now know the outcome. Biblical poets give us astonishing images of how things will ultimately turn out – i.e. Isaiah 25 and Revelation 21. God gathers up all people – and all means ALL. Tears are wiped away from every eye. Death and everything else that would crush are swallowed up and are “no more.” We all feast on real food and well-aged wines.
Adversity does not build character. It reveals it. We are transformed through pain. Resiliency, then, is the ability to carry on amid adversity. It is the character that calls us to be our best selves when the world is falling apart and there are cacophonies of blaming, fear, and self-protection. It is the character that reveals us to be hopeful and find everyday meaning and purpose in a world gripped by the ramifications of this global pandemic. It is a character that can see what the world cannot see, dream for what the world cannot dream and work for what the world is unwilling to work because it has been forged by a delight in the fact that God has raised Jesus from the dead.
Communities of Anticipation
Not only is the church necessary during these days, its defining ritual in a meal of bread and wine is also. The wonders of cyber-technology enable us to celebrate this meal together even while under stay-at-home directives. It is in this meal that we eat and drink the cry of the church from the very beginning:
Christ has died! Christ is risen! Christ will come again!
In this meal we submit ourselves to both the night of betrayal and to the promised future. It was the late great theologian Walter Bouman who taught that the bread we break and the wine we drink are relics from the future. We know how the story ends. We know that there is no station so dark, no news so fearful, no station in life so devoid of hope that God has not already entered into it, changed it and opened up to us God’s future of love and life that win in the end.
No matter where you are or the circumstances in which you find yourselves, the saying of the psalmist (Psalm 118) calls us to resurrection lives today – right here and right now!
This is the day the Lord has made!
Let us rejoice and be glad in it!
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,
A Case for Virtual Communion
While we are experiencing stay-at-home directives and the church cannot physically gather, here is a voice that greatly adds to the conversation about virtual communion. It is informed by biblical hope, the Lutheran confessions, and contextual relevance. Doug Hill is the lead pastor at Abiding Hope Church in Littleton, Colorado. He earned his MDiv at Trinity Lutheran Seminary (Columbus, Ohio) and his DMin at San Francisco Theological Seminary (San Anselmo, California). He leads The Anchor Church movement for the purpose of revitalizing congregations. He will soon have a book released by Fortress Press on intentional cultural architecture.
A Historic Time
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is a truly historic time for our world, our nation, and our church. The global pandemic of COVID-19 calls for all of us to stay home not only for self-protection, but in the name of love toward neighbor. Because we as a church support doing what is best for the common good, our denomination along with many others have called for congregations not to hold gatherings in person, including worship. This has necessarily led to the creation of online resources for worship, small group gatherings, at-home confirmation curricula, and more.
Whether to Engage in Virtual Communion
The streaming of worship has generated a conversation regarding whether to engage in virtual communion or to abstain from communion until the time when the church can gather again in person. I have read several documents from bishops’ offices and seminaries making cases on both sides of the question. As someone who is choosing to conduct virtual communion as part of our online worship experience, I have been troubled by much of what I’ve read. I believe that we need to be respectful and loving to one another as we engage in this discussion and so forgive me if anything I write crosses the line as I am very passionate about this topic.
Contra-Arguments are Troublesome
Many of the documents I’ve read do not even come close to representing the meaning, significance, purpose, or practice of virtual communion. I feel personally misunderstood and misrepresented by the innuendos presented by some that conducting virtual communion will degrade the meaning of the Eucharist. Such an argument utilizes a fallacious slippery-slope logic based in fear. Do we really believe that when this pandemic is over, everyone participating in online worship will stop attending churches and instead choose to have communion alone at home? The very reason that people are participating in online worship and virtual communion is to feel a sense of connection to their faith community through this time of forced isolation.
What is the Church?
Article VII of the Augsburg Confessions, a core foundational document for Lutherans, states that the Christian church is where the Gospel is preached in its purity and the sacraments are administered according to the Gospel. What makes us church is the proclamation of the word AND the administration of the sacraments. Both are necessary! This means that WITHOUT the proclamation of the Word AND/OR the administration of the sacraments, we are not Church!
The ELCA came to recognize that it was theologically flawed for American congregations only to conduct communion a few times a year (which is how I grew up in a large congregation in Pennsylvania) and so over the past thirty or so years, the ELCA has called for weekly Eucharist. If the reasoning about the sufficiency of grace through the proclaimed Word alone is valid, as some are attesting, then there would have been no need for such an emphatic emphasis within the ELCA.
Jesus and the Efficacy of the Meal
If grace is sufficient without the meal, then why did Jesus institute it? Why not just preach and sing for worship? Because there’s something the meal does that nothing else can do as well. The meal joins us as One and points us toward a day when all will be included, tears will be wiped from all faces, death will be swallowed up, and we will be drawn into the new creation (see Isaiah 25:6-10a and Revelation 21:4). It’s the meal that draws us into lives of prolepsis in which the promised future is lived fully today. We are to live the eschatological feast (Oneness with God, humanity, and Creation) in all that we are and do.
Virtual Communion Live
When our congregation engages in virtual worship, the attendees are free to comment in real time. They greet one another, offer comments on the scripture, liturgy, music, sermon, offer prayers for one another, share peace with one another, and finally commune together. All of this occurs through the blessing of technology. It IS community. It’s not fake. It’s not a show or performance. It IS the assembly of God’s people.
Don’t we believe that the meal transcends time and space so that when we participate in the Eucharist, we are participating in the eschatological feast with all of God’s people across the globe past, present, and future? That’s what Dr. Walter Bouman taught us in systematic theology at Trinity Lutheran Seminary. If that’s true, then it transcends the space between computer screens, kitchens, and family rooms. And I believe, even transcends the time between the recording of the service and when someone receives it.
The Confusion with Home Communion
Furthermore, some of the documents I’ve read advocate for us taking “home communion” to the sick or dying. Here in Colorado, even though churches have been deemed to be “essential,” we are not permitted to enter nursing homes, hospitals, or hospice centers during this crisis. We are forced to pray with people via Zoom or phone. We cannot deliver “home communion.” It’s forbidden.
A Great Time to be the Church
This is a great time to be the church, to stand as witness to a suffering God not in some palace light years away, but right here, right now. This is the witness of the Eucharist assuring us that regardless of what we might be facing, we are one with God, one another, and all of Creation. That IS the Gospel. May all be filled with hope and trust in this very good news!
With abiding hope,
Pastor Doug Hill
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,
