Repentant and expectant

You may want to read 2 Peter 3:8-15a and Mark 1:1-8 before you read this post.

Audio of this post is available.

It’s an old story. People were leaving the church because their expectations were not being met. In this case, they had come to faith in Christ expecting that his return was imminent; that soon, very soon he would come to judge the living and the dead, and reign in peace forever. They had come to faith in Christ with a sense of urgency, and that urgency began to dissolve when months of red-alert expectation turned into years of waiting, and years into generations.

Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation! (2 Peter 3:4)

Nothing has changed! Where is the promise of his coming? It’s a fair question, and most of 2 Peter is a response to it. The main argument in the letter is not new, because waiting for God’s promise to be fulfilled is something God’s people have always struggled with. The writer quotes a verse from Psalm 90, With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. In other words, our sense of time and God’s are vastly different.

More importantly, though, what we perceive to be a delay is not an indication of God’s slowness, but rather points to the character of God as patient and merciful: The day has not come yet, because God does not want any to perish, not even one. And so Advent is as much our time of waiting as it is God’s: we are waiting for the coming of God’s reign in glory, while God is waiting for all of us to come to repentance.

With frustration we occasionally raise our voices and our hands to the heavens, “Where are you? What is taking you so long? Nothing has changed!” And the voice from heaven sounds almost like an echo, without the exasperation; it is a voice of great kindness, forbearance, and patience: “Where are you? What is taking you so long? Everything has changed – when will you repent?”

What we perceive as absence, is the very presence of God’s mercy. The passage from 2 Peter we heard this morning ends with the remarkable statement, “Regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.” What we perceive to be a delay of God’s salvation, is our salvation, the gift of time for us to practice true repentance. We are being saved by a God who waits patiently.

Only days after gunmen killed more than 170 men and women im Mumbai, we know the temptation to ask God for the final cosmic showdown in which the wicked are destroyed and the righteous rewarded.

Bring an end to the violence and the hatred – where is the promise of your coming?

I have prayed like that, only to realize that I didn’t consider my own hatred and violence, but conveniently projected them on the bad guys. Phantasies of a Hollywood-style day of vengeance tell us more about ourselves and our thirst for retribution than about God’s justice. God’s forbearance allows us to recognize our own deep need for healing grace and repentance, and God’s patience with all helps us to resist our own impatience with each other.

In accordance with God’s promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

We wait, noting and lamenting the distance between our world and one where righteousness isn’t homeless anymore. We wait, not passively, sitting back and expecting others to take care of our problems, but rather patiently, actively, and expectantly. We wait, because waiting prepares us for God’s coming.

The writer of 2 Peter encourages us, “Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish.”

The things for which we wait shape who we are becoming. Awaiting a world where righteousness is at home, we strive to live in righteousness. In every dimension of our lives, we turn away from complicity with the old world and turn to embrace the coming realm. The old age is marked by idolatry, sin, injustice, and violence; but the coming realm of God is faithfulness, forgiveness, righteousness, and peace.

We live in a world that aches under the weight of sin, but also echoes with the promises of God. We know how hard it is to live in the borderlands between what is and what shall be, between the promise and the coming true. We know the temptation to lower our sights to more manageable hopes, small things within our reach.

But today we are reminded that the dimensions of our hope determine the dimensions of our lives. Diminished hope results in a much smaller life. The writer of 2 Peter encourages us to resist the temptation and lead lives of holiness and godliness, lives shaped entirely within the horizon of God’s promise and future, lives of bold hope.

In the wilderness of these days, when peace is hard to find and systems built on more manageable hopes and old-fashioned greed are collapsing around us, a familiar figure shows up. Clothed with camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and living on a diet of locusts and wild honey, he speaks of repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

His lifestyle embodies complete dependence on God: he only eats what the earth produces on its own, without the work of human hands. His message also directs our attention to complete dependence on God: confess your sins and be baptized. Look at yourselves and your world with open eyes and honesty, and embrace who you shall be in the world to come. He is the voice in the wilderness calling us to prepare the way of the Lord by becoming an Avent community, a community of the repentant and expectant.

The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

And just a surely as he came then, he will come again. And just as his people waited then, we wait now. And just as time was a gift then for all people to ready themselves for the inbreaking of God’s time, so it is now.

We repent: We turn from what we have made of ourselves and the world, from the dead ends where we find ourselves, to the way of the Lord and the new heavens and the new earth where righteousness is at home. We turn from self-serving phantasies, delusions of grandeur and illusions of control to the mercy of God.

Mark’s gospel begins with what sounds like a title, The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God. Scholars long have wondered why he didn’t just call it The good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God, instead of its beginning. Nowadays they are debating whether this should be read as the headline for the opening verses, after which, in verse 9, Jesus of Nazareth steps onto the narrative stage; or if it should be read as the headline for the Galilean ministry of Jesus as opposed to his passion; or as the headline for the whole of Mark’s book and what it recounts. I’m leaning toward the latter: the story Mark tells is the beginning of the good news that is meant to unfold in the lives of its hearers and readers. He tells the beginning of a story whose final chapter will open with the return of Christ.

As hearers of Mark’s gospel and followers of Jesus, we are all characters in this story, living toward the grand finale. At the beginning of the church year we go back to the beginning of the gospel not out of historical curiosity, but to find a new beginning for ourselves: to find direction and purpose amid the chaos of this economic crisis; to grow the roots of peace in the barren landscape of terrorist violence, war, and our own violent phantasies; to start over with new courage in the wilderness of faith that has lost its urgency and passion.

Uncertain whether we can be among those who carry the story forward, we return to the beginning, to the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, the baptizer who speaks of repentance and the forgiveness of sins, and announces the coming one. The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ is the beginning of God’s future in the midst of this old world. For us, it all begins again as we hear the words again, and this time we are a bit less self-assured and a bit more aware that God’s patience is indeed our salvation.

Peace enters our hearts as we encounter John again who reminds us that we need not be tied to our fears, our guilt, or our shame, but are free to embrace God’s forgiveness. Peace takes root in our hearts as we remember what we await: a world where righteousness is at home. That peace shapes our thoughts, words, and deeds as we begin again to live into the future God has prepared for us.

I Don't Care

You may want to read Isaiah 64:1-12 before you read this.

Audio of the post is also available.

Thomas Merton, back in the sixties, somewhere in Kentucky went into a drugstore to get some toothpaste. When the clerk asked him which brand he preferred, he replied, “I don’t care.”

“He almost dropped dead,” Merton later wrote. “I was supposed to feel strongly about Colgate or Pepsodent or Crest. … the worst thing you can do now is not care about these things.”

Kathleen Norris called Merton a prophet for saying “I don’t care” in one of the temples for the brand-conscious consumer.

These days, of course, it’s a lot harder to not care about these things since they tend to be everywhere. TV, radio, billboards, busses, racecars, flashing banners at every other website, glossy ads in every magazine or journal. And since all that is not enough, somebody somewhere works hard so you notice that the young hero on your favorite show drives a Ford and the villain an import. You’re told to ask your doctor if Aplex, Beplex, or Ceplex is for you, and you better make sure you get some over the counter Dementex to fight off insanity as you try to jot down all the things you need to remember for your next doctor’s appointment.

The paper on Thursday resembled the Metro phonebook in volume and weight. Most of it were high-gloss inserts with coupons for the opening of the bargain-hunting season on Friday. As a brand and price conscious consumer you are expected to spend your Thanksgiving morning reading all that information carefully to determine in front of which big box store you will spend the night, and then mapping out the rest of your Black Friday shopping trip.

On the other hand, you could just take another sip of your coffee, get up and baste the turkey, sit down again and declare with prophetic clarity, “I don’t care.”

Retail marketing and faith are both about the cultivation of desire. But where marketing is all about annual sales, brand loyalty, and the promise of fulfillment, faith leads us to question the noise and to bring our own desires in tune with God’s. During Advent this difference and tension becomes clearer than during any other time of the year.

Many voices invite us to think of this as the holiday season of santas, angels, trees and lights, shopping mixed with warm childhood memories, and all of it bathed in a nostalgic glow.

In the church, this is new year’s day, and we are invited to begin the new year preparing joyfully for the coming of God in a child and preparing humbly and penitently for his coming again to judge the living and the dead. The latter, of course, doesn’t lend itself to red-nosed holiday cheer, which is why the merchants won’t touch it.

In the church, Advent doesn’t begin with carols and pageants, but with the tears and prayers of an old man (Isaiah 63:15).

Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and glorious habitation. Where are your zeal and your might? The yearning of your heart and your compassion?

The voice of Isaiah had been with the people of Jerusalem and Judah through the unimaginable loss of the city and the temple to Babylon’s armies; his voice was an essential part of the long reflection that followed that devastating experience in exile:

The loss was God’s judgment on a people who made a mockery of righteousness, Isaiah declared. They would return to Zion, though, and their return would be glorious. The Lord would lead them on a highway through the wilderness to the land of their ancestors and the city of David, he proclaimed.

But when they returned, the shouts of joy and songs of freedom soon died down among the silent ruins of the city and the temple. Worst of all was the silence of God.

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake and the nations might tremble at your presence (Isaiah 64:1).

The old prophet gave voice to a people’s longing. They wanted to see some sign of God’s presence, some unmistakable indication that their suffering did not go unnoticed.

Advent begins with that silence. Have you ever prayed and felt like you were talking to yourself? Have you ever knelt under a blanket of silence and pleaded and all you could sense was your own yearning? Have you ever let go of all respectful restraint and cried out, “O tear open the heavens and come! Come like fire on brushwood! Do something unexpected nobody can ignore!”

The wonder of the old prophet’s prayer is that he doesn’t quit praying. He meditates on the character of God recalled and praised in the stories of God’s people. He reflects on his people’s situation in light of those stories. He admits in what sounds like a confession (Isaiah 64:7), There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you, but he sees responsibility also on God’s side, saying, You have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. He keeps praying. He doesn’t turn away from the silence. He doesn’t let go of the relationship that has shaped his entire life.

And he says (Isaiah 64:8), Yet, O Lord.

In one little word he wraps up his people’s anguish and his own, the hopelessness of their circumstance, and their only hope:

Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are the potter; we are the work of your hand.

It is a prayer of surrender and trust. The little word yet opens the window to a future determined no longer by human failure but by the unlimited possibilities of God’s creative power.

Advent begins with the silence that makes room for us to be honest about ourselves and the condition of our world.

Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation, Isaiah prays (64:10-11), our holy and beautiful house, where our ancestors praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins.

And at the end his old voice turns into a whisper (Isaiah 64:12), After all this, will you restrain yourself, O Lord? Will you keep silent, and punish us so severely?

The question lingers between earth and heaven, and now everything depends on that little yet. Will you hide your face forever or turn to us with mercy? Will you keep silent or speak the word of peace? Will you remember that we are your people, and that without you we are nothing but dust?

Thomas Merton spent much time in silence, Advent silence, waiting for the revealing of God’s word and face. In silence he remembered what is worth caring about and what is not. It was silence that taught him so say “I don’t care” to the clerk’s question about his preferred brand of toothpaste. It was silence that taught him to care about the suffering of others and to desire truth and peace. Silence can make you turn away from God and toward the noise of other promises, or it can make you lean more attentively toward God.

Isaiah spoke for all of God’s people who at least occasionally wish that God would tear open the veil between earth and heaven and do something big, something that would undeniably manifest the divine presence among us, so that all of us, from the first to the last, would confess that the Lord is God and no other.

We live in a world of constant noise, and so we expect a voice loud enough to drown out all the others. We live in a world of constant distractions, and so we expect a vision bright enough to outshine all the others. We live in a world of constant advertising, and so we expect a product that promises and delivers fulfillment in an instant.

But God doesn’t shout people into belief. God doesn’t bend people into obedience or manipulate them into relationship. God calls and waits.

Will Willimon once said, “Sometimes, God speaks, but we need to be leaning toward [God] to hear. What kind of ear do you bring to the hearing?”

The same can be said for our other senses. What kind of eye do you bring to the seeing? We need to be leaning toward God to perceive. We must sit in the dark with nothing but a small candle of hope in order to see the light of Christ. We must enter the great silence and wait there in order to hear the songs of angels. We must pray patiently with Isaiah and lean toward the fullness of life in God’s new creation in order to perceive the new thing God is doing now.

One of our carols reminds us,

How silently, how silently,
the wondrous gift is giv’n;
so God imparts to human hearts
the blessings of His heav’n.
No ear may hear His coming,
but in this world of sin,
where meek souls will receive Him still,
the dear Christ enters in.

One of the great dangers in this world of sin is that we get absorbed in the noise. We see a child without food, and we say, “I don’t care, it’s not my child.” And the noise keeps getting louder.

We see a woman who can’t pay her rent, and we say, “I don’t care, she’s not my sister.” And the noise keeps getting louder.

We see a man sitting on the same bench at the mall, always by himself, day after day, and we say, “I don’t care, he’s not my father.” And the noise keeps getting louder.

And we see a baby, born between animals in a barn, and we say, “I don’t care, they shouldn’t have babies in the first place.”

Yet those who have kept the little flame of hope, those who have leaned intently into the silence and toward the fullness of God’s reign, see the baby and welcome the dear Christ.

And they tell the story of how God tore open the heavens.

Royal Vocation

You may want to read Psalm 8 before you read this.

Audio of this post is also available.

When I’m at the grocery store I usually try to keep my thoughts to myself. Nobody wants to see a middle-aged white guy pushing a grocery cart down the aisle and mumbling to himself.

But when I walk through the valley of canned and bottled beverages, and my path leads me beside still waters, the beginnings of a psalm rise to my lips:

Lord God, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
When I look at these bottles and jugs, the work of our fingers –
what are human beings that you are mindful of them?

One that gets me every time is Smartwater. How much smarter do you think it is than dumb tap water?

According to estimates by the Beverage Marketing Corporation from 2006, Americans consume 8.3 billion gallons of bottled water – that’s about 26 gallons per person a year.

The Pacific Institute estimates that producing the bottles for American consumption in 2006 required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil – that’s enough to fuel more than 1 million cars for a year.

Overall, the average energy cost to make the plastic, fill the bottles, transport them to market and then deal with the waste would be like filling up a quarter of every bottle with oil. Consuming four bottles of water is like burning a bottle of oil. Smartwater?

Well, fortunately all that plastic can be recycled. Except that, unfortunately that’s not happening: In 2004, the last year for which data is available, 85 percent of all non-carbonated PET bottles ended up in landfills, or as litter in parks, along roadways, in rivers and oceans – that’s 24 billion empty water bottles – 66 million every day! Can you imagine the size of that pile?

When I look at that mountain –
Lord God, what are human beings that you put up with us?

I remember nights many years ago when I lay on my back in the field and gazed at the sky – I felt small and at the same time lifted up by the awesome beauty of the stars. The view of the universe was so vast, so deep and silent, all I could hear was my own heart beat. We feel small under the dark tent of the night sky. We are specks of stardust in a vast universe, specks of stardust that ask questions:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?

I know in my bones what the psalmist is talking about, and most of you know it too; we have looked at the heavens with awe and wonder. Most of our children, though, have never seen the Milky Way, and seeing it at the planetarium doesn’t even come close.

Friday night was clear and cold, the humidity was down in the teens, but the sky still didn’t have anywhere near the depth that I remember from nights in the 70’s. Astronomers tell us that two-thirds of Americans today cannot see the Milky Way from their backyards. The last time I saw it was several years ago, on a night hike in western Montana, far away from any city. Dark night skies, for the first time in history, are becoming an extinct phenomenon. Why? Because we leave the lights on, and many lights installed in homes, businesses, street lights and billboards are too bright and aimed upwards or sideways. All that light scatters through the atmosphere and brightens the night sky with an orange glow, reducing the universe, across most of the eastern United States, to a mere handful of stars. Researchers predict that at the current rate of increasing light pollution, by 2025 no dark skies will remain in the continental United States. We are robbing ourselves of one of the most ancient sources of awe.

If we want to show our children what the psalmist saw, we may have to take them all the way to Nevada, to the Great Basin National Park. The park service advertises,

On a clear, moonless night (…) thousands of stars, five of our solar system’s eight planets, star clusters, meteors, man-made satellites, and the Milky Way can be seen with the naked eye. The area boasts some of the darkest night skies left in the United States. Low humidity and light pollution combine with high elevation to create a unique window to the universe.

Sitting between piles of empty water bottles and under dimming stars, what we need is a window to ourselves: Who are we and what is our role in this marvelous world?

Our psalm can be that window. It is a prayer of praise, erupting with a shout and ending with the same exuberant phrase: O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

With its very form the psalm tells us that who we are cannot be addressed outside of a framework of praise: we begin with the joyous acclamation of God; we praise God who has prevailed against the powers of chaos, the Creator who established a world in which life can thrive; and what lingers at the end is nothing but that same exuberant joy – the earth itself a witness not to the power of chaos but to the majesty of God’s name.

In the beginning and in the end, God’s will and faithfulness prevail, and between these reliable pillars, the meditation on what it means to be human takes place.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established –

Perhaps you think that it was so much easier in ancient times to view the heavens with such confidence. Perhaps you say to yourself, “Easy for them to speak of God’s fingers, they did not know what we know about galaxies and giant black holes and the age of the universe.” You are right, they didn’t.

But this statement nevertheless represents a remarkable testimony. For thousands of years, humankind had regarded sun, moon and stars as distant deities and their courses as the source of arbitrary powers that destined human existence. In that world, the people who wrote and prayed this psalm boldly looked at sun and moon and stars not as gods, but as creation of the one God; as objects of awesome wonder, not of fear; and they viewed themselves not as helpless chess pieces pushed around by cosmic forces, but as partners of the one God, maker of heaven and earth.

The psalm is their invitation to us to pray with them, to trust this God, and to find in our relationship with this God our purpose and meaning.

You have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet,
all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

The sons and daughters of Adam and Eve look at the world, the work of God’s hands, and they marvel at their royal vocation: crowned with glory and honor, they have been given dominion over all living things. I often wonder if the planet wouldn’t be better off without us, kings and queens who trample all over the things put under our feet. But then I ask myself, if God has such great faith in humankind, shouldn’t I have at least a little?

Of all living things that inhabit the earth, we alone have the capacity to make this planet our planet, to create a world of culture with the things offered by nature. The trouble with our species is that we have a hard time remembering that dominion is a stewardship term, and not a license to do as we please with this piece of unclaimed property called earth. We have a hard time remembering that dominion has been given to all generations of humanity, and not just to us: our grandchildren and their grandchildren share our royal vocation, they are not our maids and valets who come to clean up after us.

Dominion is an awesome responsibility that easily deteriorates into destructive domination and abusive tyranny. The inconvenient truth about us is that we are royal stewards who fancy ourselves to be owners of the planet. Our psalm suggests a simple but powerful countermeasure: rather than tooting your own horn, sing to the Lord. Through the worship of God, we remain mindful of the relationship that saves us and all of creation from ourselves.

This psalm is unique in addressing God throughout in the second person; the focus remains on God:

How majestic is your name!
You have set, you have founded, you have established, you are mindful, you care, you have made, you have crowned, you have given dominion, you have put all things under their feet.
How majestic is your name!

The only time a human is the subject of a verb is in verse 3, "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers..." Humans do not rule autonomously like spoiled, absolute monarchs. The calling of the human being is to behold what God has made, to pray and sing in wonder to the Maker, and to remember that our dominion derives its authority entirely from God’s sovereignty. Humanity’s royal status and dominion are part of God’s reign, not its replacement, and once we take God out of the picture, we invite disaster. Our psalm locates us between God and animals: responsible to God and responsible for the creatures placed under our care. We are to be partners in caring for a creation that is always threatened by chaos.

Where can we turn to see our royal vocation embodied in a way we can observe and imitate? As always, we look to Jesus. Jesus who did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, humbled himself, and became obedient (Philippians 2:5-11). In Jesus Christ, dominion takes the form of self-emptying service.

Sitting between piles of empty water bottles and under dimming stars, we need a window to our true selves. We look to Jesus. In him we see the fulfillment of what it means to be human, as well as the reign of God in person. Following him we live our royal vocation in joyful obedience to God and with caring attention to God’s creation.

Invest or Inter?

click on blog title for audio file

To all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

Hearing these words makes me shiver. These are times when many have lost what little they had, and those who had much lost as well, depending on where they had invested their wealth. In a global economy where poverty in many places still is deadly, and equal opportunity for all remains a challenge, hearing these words makes me shiver.

To all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

These are words with authority, words printed in red, straight from the gospel – only Jesus is not making market predictions, he is not in the economic advice business. The words sound like a proverb, a morsel of insight distilled from decades of life experience, but that is not what they are.

Proverbs for investors come from people like Warren Buffett, who follows and recommends a simple rule: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.

Jesus, however, is talking about discipleship, and we know that he recommends neither fear nor greed as motivating factors for his followers.

Jesus tells us a story that involves enormous amounts of money, and he turns trading and investing into a parable about faithful living. A talent is a lot of money, about as much as a worker makes in a lifetime.

So this man, going on a journey, entrusts his entire property, everything he owns to his servants, to each according to his abilities. Two of them go off at once and start trading, while the third goes off, digs a hole in the ground, and hides his master’s money. Two of them double the entrusted funds – not a bad return on investment, and they both receive their master’s praise.

The spot light is on the third one, though, the one-talent servant. He admits that he was afraid and says, “Here you have what is yours.” The one-talent servant, out of fear, treated what was an investment as a safety deposit – he didn’t lose any of what he had been given, but he didn’t use it either.

Now let’s pretend for a moment a different kind of plot development; let’s say the other two invested everything in real estate, mortgage-backed securities, and U.S. automobile stocks.

Upon the master’s return one said, “Master, you handed over to me five talents; the markets were really doing great until August when the bottom fell out. Now there are only three talents left.” The second said, “Master, you handed over to me two talents, and I’m glad I lost only half of it.”

What did the master say to them? Your answer will depend on what kind of master you think he is. Is this someone who is looking for maximum return on his investment? Or can you imagine the master praising the two for taking risks and using what had been entrusted to them? Your answer will depend on what you think this investment parable is really about.

This is a story Jesus told his disciples after teaching them everything about discipleship and the kingdom. This is a story Jesus told his disciples just days before he was crucified. This is a story about us, what we have been given by our master, and what we do with it.

Our master is quite a risk-taker: he has entrusted to us all that he has. Together, we have been given everything that is the master’s, everything we need to proclaim God’s reign and live faithfully as servants of God. We have his teachings and his spirit, we have the power to forgive, and the promise of his presence. He has entrusted to us all that he has, and every servant has received a portion.

Not many of us will think of ourselves as five-talent or two-talent servants; we’re humble people, aren’t we? There’s a danger in being too humble, though: You think of yourself as just an ordinary one-talent disciple, and chances are that whenever God’s mission in the world calls for courageous and generous action, you’ll defer to what you consider the better-endowed disciples.
What you forget is that one talent is an enormous gift. It’s not your talent for cooking, or playing the piano, or remembering the names of everybody you’ve ever met – these are all gifts and abilities God has blessed you with. The talents in our story are everything Jesus gives us so we can participate in his mission in the world, and just one talent is a treasure that needs to be invested, not buried.

Jesus says, “It is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master” (Mt 10:25). It is enough for us to imitate him, to invest ourselves the way he did: words like generous, kind, and fearless come to mind, merciful and faithful. It is enough for us to recognize what we have been given and to make it our daily joy and work to invest it. The third servant in the parable did not recognize what he had been given, and he did not know his master:
“I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.”

You have to wonder where on earth he got that impression – or could it be that he made it all up to justify his own inaction?

The master we know has scattered the seed of the kingdom with lavish extravagance. The teacher we follow in no way resembles this servant’s description. If there is one thing we know, it is that he is not harsh. He only reaps what has sprung up from the seeds he scattered throughout his life, seeds of grace and compassion, of truth and hope. He is the grain of wheat that falls into the earth and dies, and he only gathers the abundance of fruit that gift has born (John 12:24).

Our master encourages us not to hold back when it comes to investing what we have been given, but to be generous and daring. He has entrusted the good news of the kingdom to us, not as a temporary responsibility that he will take back one day, but as a gift that is ours now and forever. His words, “Enter into the joy of your master” are his invitation to take that gift and to invest it without any fear of losing it – we cannot lose it by investing it.

• An investment the size of a mustard seed grows into a tree, and the birds come and make nests in its branches (Mt 13:31).

• A small investment of five loaves and two fish results in a feast for thousands (Mt 14:17).

I wonder if the one-talent servant in our story ever understood the economy of the kingdom, an economy that isn’t ruled by scarcity but by abundance. I wonder if he could think of giving only as losing, and consequently he nurtured only fear, rather than joy. He buried the gift in order to protect it, and ironically that was the only way to lose it.

I believe this is what Jesus has in mind when he teaches us, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Mt 16:25). He is not just talking about the rare circumstances where his followers will have to face violent persecution; he addresses the daily challenge of investing ourselves without fear in God’s mission: by forgiving someone when it seems much safer to bury that impulse; by beginning a difficult conversation when it seems so much safer to be quiet; by recognizing ourselves as Jesus’ trusted and talented friends rather than hiding behind timid humility.

Jesus encourages us to go off and trade as if each of us had been given at least five talents. We are free to invest with abandon because the kingdom treasury has unlimited resources.

I believe it was Nelson Mandela who said that our greatest fear is not that we might fail, but that we might be successful beyond imagining. Could it be that we’re afraid to use what we have been given out of fear that it might actually work? Could it be that we’re afraid the world around us might change in ways we cannot imagine, and our investment, Christ’s investment in us might actually double?

Jesus has given us everything we need to live with faith and courage, but there is a real possibility that we are ignoring his investment in us and keeping it safely underground.
Who knows, you may be a five-talent servant living and investing on a one-talent budget.

With this story Jesus encourages us to unearth the gift – but how do you that when you don’t remember where you’ve buried it?

You dig in promising places. At a recent workshop we identified three areas of spiritual attention for Elders, and I believe they provide a map of the promising places:

One: You turn outward with perhaps small but intentional gestures of hospitality and service – Room in the Inn offers many opportunities for that.

Two: You nurture your inner life with perhaps small but intentional and regular times of prayer, Bible study, and spiritual reading – just ten minutes a day can move a lot of dirt.

And three: You connect with others – you worship and work with others, you study and learn and play with fellow servants; you find the friends who will see what you overlook, and who will find in you a five-talent servant who is still unearthing the treasure of the kingdom.

Outward. Inward. Communal. It’s a map that covers the world. Now you all go and start digging – there’s a lot of hidden treasure.

Welcome to the wondrous economy of God’s reign.

A Door Has Been Opened

click on blog title for audio file

A door has been opened on Tuesday. In a time of economic uncertainty and overall concern about America’s place and role in the world, the people of this nation have opened a door with this election. The shame and lingering injustice of slavery are like walls that restrict the imagination and the actual participation of all people in public life—but the same people opened a door. Even if you didn’t vote for the Senator from Illinois, surely you will celebrate that a man whose father came from Africa will be the next president of the United States.

A text message sent from phone to phone across the nation spelled out the significance of this election that goes far beyond partisan politics: Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Barack could run. Barack ran so our children can fly.

A door has been opened, and we have the privilege of following our children as they cross the threshold into a future where the walls that separate us no longer exist.

Jesus says, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened” (Mt 7:7-8).

In this passage from the sermon on the mount Jesus teaches us about prayer and perseverance in prayer. For generations we have prayed, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” first suspecting and then knowing that human dignity and freedom are not determined by skin color or ethnic background. We know that it is God’s will that we live in ways that reflect that truth of one humanity. For generations we have searched for ways to move from the guilt and shame of slavery and Jim Crow toward reconciliation and restored community. For generations we have been knocking, and a door has been opened.

I’ve been thinking about closed doors a lot this past week. I replayed a scene from my childhood in my mind, again and again. My brother and I shared a bedroom for many years—two beds, two desks, a dresser with two sets of drawers, and a wardrobe with two doors. We shared a room, but it often felt more like the Berlin Wall ran right through it. There was a seam in the carpet, just between our beds, and at times that line was as heavily guarded as the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. We could be very territorial.

I don’t remember what exactly happened one day, but my brother was in our room and he had locked the door while I was gone. I asked him to please let me in, but he didn’t. I knocked, gently first, then harder, but his response didn’t change. I pleaded with him, and he laughed – he thought it was hilarious.

Eventually I went to the kitchen and came back with a sturdy stool, solid beech wood. “Let me in.” – He just laughed. I was furious. I grabbed the stool, swung it over my shoulder, and – wham! – hit that door as hard as I could.

Too bad there weren’t any baseball recruiters around to see my swing – they would have been impressed by the hole I put in that door. My brother and I looked at it and suddenly agreed, “Man, that was stupid.”

His ugly pleasure in shutting me out was gone, and so was my angry frustration. We finally found common purpose in mending the damage we had caused, and in working together we learned to live together in a shared room.

The story of the bridesmaids doesn’t end with a vision of togetherness, but rather with harsh separation. Five of them stand outside. They knock and they plead, “Lord, Lord, open to us.” And the voice from behind the closed door declares, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.” Is he pretending? Is he playing some cruel game? Is he telling us that parts of his sermon on the mount need to be rewritten?

Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you—unless of course you ran out of oil and show up late for the banquet, in which case you might as well forget about the party.

Do we need to rewrite his earlier teachings?

Do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ (Mt 6:31). But worry about your oil and how big a bottle you will have to fill to let your light shine when the bridegroom arrives. Worry about your oil and let others worry about theirs, so you don’t end up sitting outside in the darkness.

Is Matthew telling us that worries about oil not only determine the economic and foreign policy of nations but our life in the kingdom as well? Is everything Jesus said earlier suddenly up for revision?

“Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” the story ends—well, nothing beats worries in keeping you awake; so is sleeplessness suddenly a Christian virtue? Are we to stay awake, worried about our personal oil supply while anxiously scanning the horizon for the Son of Man coming with power and great glory (Mt 24:30)?

No, not at all.

When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid:
yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet.

Proverbs 3:24, we have to hear it in beautiful King James English to grasp that this is both a promise and a command. It is the Lord who neither slumbers nor sleeps so that God’s people can lie down and sleep in peace (Ps 4:8; Ps 121:4-5). The reign of God is like a baby, sound asleep in her mother’s lap, not like a bunch of frantic bridesmaids running through the night in search of fuel for their lamps.

To live in joyful anticipation of the reign of God to be fulfilled in all things is like waiting for a wedding feast to begin. Ten bridesmaids, each wearing a dress cut from the same fabric and carrying a lamp—and nothing in their appearance would tell you which ones are foolish or wise. Ten bridesmaids waiting to meet the bridegroom, waiting for the procession to begin. All ten become drowsy and go to sleep, taking a little nap before the big party, lamps in their laps, and no one can tell which ones are wise or foolish. But then they wake up. And suddenly there’s a line running right down the middle, wise ones on the right, foolish ones on the left, separated like sheep from goats.

This isn’t the first time Jesus talks about lamps. In the sermon on the mount, he teaches us about the life of discipleship, and he says,

You are the light of the world. […] No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven (Mt 5:14-16).

Let your light shine. Give light to all in the house. Let the world see your good works. The oil in our lamps isn’t some hard-to-find commodity for which we must compete; it isn’t even something we have; it is who we are. Waiting for the fullness of God’s reign is not about hoarding oil or anything else – it’s about burning with expectation.

This isn’t the first time Jesus talks about being foolish or wise. In the sermon on the mount, he says,

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall (Mt 7:24-27)!

The oil that makes our lives shine like lamps on a stand are the teachings of Jesus, teachings that light us up and transform us and our actions. This kind of oil cannot be commodified, bottled, sold or borrowed.

• I can look at Rosa Parks and the courage and beauty of her witness, but I can’t ask her, “Could you give me some of that?”

• I can look at Martin Luther King and his prophetic passion for justice, but I can’t turn to him, “Let me borrow some of that.”

What you and I and everyone who hears the words of Jesus can do, though, is act on them with courage and passion. What we can do is greet the bridegroom who comes to us in the hungry and the thirsty, in the stranger and the homeless and the imprisoned. What we can do is open doors we have the power to open, and step through doors that have been opened for us. What we can do and must do is stay alert during those daily kingdom moments when simple acts of mercy and compassion extend the boundaries of God’s reign and include the excluded.

Five of the bridesmaids stand outside. They knock and they plead, “Lord, Lord, open to us.” And the voice from behind the closed door declares, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.” This isn’t a cruel game of playing stranger, nor does it mean that parts of the sermon on the mount need to be rewritten. In that sermon Jesus says,

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Mt 7:21).

The bridegroom’s glorious arrival may be delayed, but the moment for the life of discipleship to begin is now – and the door is open. The coming of God’s reign in fullness may be delayed, but the time for us to live a kingdom life is now – and the door is open. Our watchfulness is needed not for scanning the horizons of history for the return of Christ—but for recognizing him in the faces of the hungry and the thirsty, the stranger, the refugee, the homeless, and those locked behind prison doors.

The wise man hears the words of Jesus and acts on them. The wise bridesmaid hears the words of Jesus and lets her life be a lamp for his light.

Ordinary Saints

Growing up I knew only one of my grandfathers, and he died when I was a teenager. It was then that I began developing a wise habit—I started adopting grandpas. Whenever I met an old man who impressed me in some way, I made him my adoptive grandpa.

One of the most recent ones was Studs Terkel, who taught me a lot about the people of the United States after I arrived here in the mid-90’s. Studs Terkel died on Friday, he was 96 years old.

Terkel was a radio man and a master interviewer; he knew how to listen so people would talk. He once recalled a moment that was typical:

There was this black woman one time, I saw her standing in the street with two or three of her kids round her and she was looking in a shopwindow. And as I’m walking by, I look to see what it is she’s looking at—and you know what? There’s nothing in the window, she’s looking in an empty shopwindow—looking at nothing. So naturally I’m curious—naturally I’m curious—so I say “Excuse me ma’am—but what are you looking at?” She doesn’t seem to mind being spoken to by a stranger, and she doesn’t turn her head around to see who’s asking her or anything, and after a moment or so she says “Oh” she says, “Oh, dreams, I’m just looking at dreams.” So I’ve got my tape recorder and I switch it on and I say “Good dreams, bad dreams . . . .?” And she starts to talk. Then she talks a little bit more, and a little bit more. And her kids are playing around her, and they can see I’m tape-recording what their mom is saying, and when she stops talking after eight, maybe ten minutes or so, one of them says “Heh mom, can we listen to what you said?” And I ask her if it’s OK with her and she says yes, so I play it back and she listens to it too. And when it’s over, she gives a little shake of her head and she looks at me, and she says “Well until I heard that, I never knew I felt that way.”

After a brief moment Terkel added,

“I never knew I felt that way.” Isn’t that incredible? The way I look at it, it’s like being a gold prospector. You find this precious metal in people when you least expect it [see Tony Parker, Studs Terkel: A Life in Words (New York: Henry Holt, 1996), pp. 167-168].

Terkel found plenty of gold; for nearly half a century, he crisscrossed the country interviewing people, both the prominent and the uncelebrated. Many of his conversations were published in books such as Working, Hard Times and The Good War for which he received the Pulitzer Prize—the stories of ordinary people about their daily work, their memories of the Depression and of World War II.

Terkel often referred to the United States as the United States of Alzheimer’s, and he recorded these conversations to help jog the nation’s memory. He wrote a dozen or so of these interview collections, chronicling much of the history of the 20th century—always interested in the lives of ordinary people, always asking “What is it like to be a certain kind of person, at a certain circumstance, at a certain time?” He could also see the irony in becoming celebrated for celebrating the uncelebrated people of the world, building himself a world reputation for giving voice to the voices of those we never hear.

Studs Terkel died on All Hollows’ Eve, the day before the church honors the saints. I wonder if he knew that the church had two days to celebrate the memory of the dead, first All Saints, when we remember those who have gone before us and who already see God face to face, and a day later, All Souls, when we remember all who have died. Without a doubt, he would have found it telling that the church saw a need to imagine heaven like boarding an airplane: early boarding for the saints who enjoy the comforts of wider seats, extra leg room, and free cocktails, while the rest are still sitting on their luggage, waiting for their rows to be called.

Some of the earliest books written and published in the church, were the lives of martyrs and saints, short biographies of men and women who lived what many considered exemplary lives of faith. But no one ever sat down to collect the stories of ordinary Christians, stories about what it was like to be a follower of Jesus at a certain circumstance, at a certain time.

Do you remember asking your parents or grandparents “What was it like when you were little?” Do you remember their stories about one-room schools, or the first family car, and watching baseball on the radio? Do you remember how wonderful it was to hear and suddenly realize that your parents—these all-powerful, all-knowing giants—once were little too? Nobody does better interviews than little girls taking a walk with their grandpa or little boys spending the night with grandma.

I have long hoped that the church would make interviews part of our discipleship training. First I imagined 12-year-olds armed with tape recorders invading homes and nursing homes and asking our oldest members “What was it like when you were baptized?” Then the prices for digital cameras began to drop – can you imagine the interview Clare would do with Risley , or Thompson with Mary Helen , and you could watch it on DVD?

And there’s no reason to limit this to just two generations. Every new Deacon should grab a camera, meet with a seasoned Elder, and ask “Can you tell me about a time when you failed as a leader and what you learned from it?” The Deacons would have a year’s worth of conversation starters about Christian leadership, and believe me, some of these interviews would become classics.

Studs Terkel mastered the journalistic art of interviewing ordinary people, and we can learn from him how to look for gold in the gravel of their daily life and sometimes daily struggle.

All Saints is not the church equivalent to the Oscars or the CMA Awards where superior performance is recognized and honored, nor is it the heavenly reflection of human societies where some always travel first class and the rest sit in coach or handle the luggage. All Saints is a day to remember that heaven is not a Discipleship Hall of Fame for the top athletes of the game; heaven is full of ordinary people. All Saints is a reminder that in the kingdom, every story, every life matters and no one is ever forgotten.

At the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sets the tone for all his teachings with nine beatitudes. Before a single instruction is given, before there has been time for obedience or disobedience, success or failure, Jesus declares God’s favor for the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek and the hungry, the merciful and the peacemakers, the pure in heart and those persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

He doesn’t list conditions those who would enter would have to fulfill, making poverty of spirit a requirement and meekness a precondition. Instead he assures us that God’s favor precedes all our efforts of doing God’s will, and that his path of meekness and mercy is indeed God’s path of peace. We walk in this path under the blessing of God and we struggle to remain true to this path under the blessing of God.

What Jesus declares here are not nine basic observations about life that others had simply overlooked. You know that meekness is not a recipe for worldly success, and that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness often go to bed hungry. Jesus reminds his followers that those who live in anticipation of God’s kingdom and who struggle daily with embodying that reign in their work and their relationships, are indeed God’s own people. Like their king, they are gentle and humble in heart (Matthew 11:19), and the powers that be will not always deal gently with them. They may look like fools in a world that plays by its own rules, but Jesus declares them blessed because the path they are on leads to God’s future. And on that day it will be the meek who inherit the earth, not the ruthless.

Blessed are those who mourn, who do not resign themselves to the present condition of the world as final, but lament the fact that God’s kingdom has not yet come and God’s will is not yet done—they will be comforted.

Blessed are ordinary people who get up in the morning and go to work in a dog-eat-dog world looking for opportunities to disrupt bad patterns with random acts of mercy, for they are God’s own people.

Blessed are ordinary people who do what they can to make peace at home, in the hallways of their school, and in the break room at work, for they will be called sons and daughters of God.

Blessed are ordinary people for whom faith is not one more thing to do, but the one thing that helps them put everything else in perspective, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are ordinary people who refuse to be defined by how much they earn or how little, how much they have accumulated or accomplished or how little, or how much power they wield or how little, ordinary people who are solely defined by how much they are loved by God—they will see God face to face.

Heaven is full of ordinary people with extraordinary stories.

Community Ministry

In recent conversations among church members many celebrated the strong involvement of our youth in community ministry. Often that note of gratitude was followed by a sigh: the adult church members don't do nearly as much.

Allow me to raise my hand and ask, "How would we know that?"

Do we know how many of our adult members volunteer in schools or local non-profit organizations?

Do we know how many of them give time, expertise, and money serving on the board of various agencies?

And most importantly, do we know how many of them have a deep commitment to their daily work as ministry?

I can't think of a single work environment where the presence of a Christian couldn't make a world of difference. The other day I read this statement:

"It is a powerful way to be a witness for Christ by demonstrating your capacity not to judge the way everybody else is judging and to serve unconditionally.”

-- Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler, a Navy lawyer who is representing a detainee of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was quoted by The New York Times (June 19).

I want to caution against the notion that our community ministry is limited to group work projects etc. organized by the church. We gather to worship and study, and then we go to serve. Perhaps we need to be more intentional about sharing how our faith shapes our daily ministry at school, in the workplace, and wherever we are called upon to give witness to the love and grace of God. At least some of those sighs may turn into cheers!

Your Reign Is An Everlasting Reign

The Disciples are very much the result of the deep desire among our founders to be God’s church in faithful response to God’s will revealed in scripture, and not in submission to “traditions of men.” [1] But that desire was nourished in the soil of a young, newly independent America, and in that respect our founders’ call to restoration of the New Testament church was closely tied to the American revolution. So allow me to speak about independence for a moment.

On May 27, 1776, the town of Malden, Massachusetts, responding to a request from the Massachusetts House of Representatives that all towns in the state declare their views on independence, had met in town meeting and unanimously declared,

The time was (…) when we loved the king and the people of Great Britain with an affection truly filial; we felt ourselves interested in their glory; we shared in their joys and sorrows; we cheerfully poured the fruit of all our labours into the lap of our mother country, and without reluctance expended our blood and our treasure in their cause. These were our sentiments toward Great Britain while she continued to act the part of a parent state; we felt ourselves happy in our connection with her, nor wished it to be dissolved; but our sentiments are altered, it is now the ardent wish of our soul that America may become a free and independent state.(…) We long entertained hope that the spirit of the British nation would once more induce them to assert their own and our rights, and bring to condign punishment the elevated villains who have trampled upon the sacred rights of men and affronted the majesty of the people. We hoped in vain; (…) we therefore renounce with disdain our connexion with a kingdom of slaves; we bid a final adieu to Britain. [2]

Several weeks later, John Adams wrote in a letter to his dear Abigail,

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. [3]

John Adams was off only by a couple of days because the Continental Congress declared the united colonies free and independent states two days before the debate on the exact wording of the Declaration of Independence had ended; but his description of our celebrations remains accurate to this day: the only things missing from his list are flags, hot-dogs and ice-cream. On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was publicly proclaimed, and that day became a milestone in the long struggle for freedom, justice, and the rule of law. Tyrants and their minions who trample upon the sacred rights of men [and women] and affront the majesty of the people can no longer sleep comfortably in their king-size beds and dream imperial dreams because in the summer of 1776, free citizens renounced their connexion with a kingdom of slaves and threw off the yoke of oppression.

For the generation shaped by the experience of the Revolutionary War, throwing off the yoke of oppression also redefined their notion of religious freedom. Before the war, religious freedom was simply exercised by attending the church of one’s choice. After the war, “it came to mean that individuals possessed the right to ignore traditional and institutional authority in religious matters. (…) Religious freedom came to mean ‘power should be surrendered to the people.’” [4]

Mark Toulouse tells the story of Lucy Mack Smith, the mother of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons, to illustrate the powerful cultural trend toward individualism following the Revolutionary War.

[She] attended numerous churches of various denominations and finally concluded that none of them taught the truth. She sought and found a minister who would baptize her as a solitary Christian with no connection to any established church. [5]

Lucy Mack Smith embraced the spirit of independence so fervently and threw off the yoke of authority so completely that she ended up the sole member of the Church of Lucy.

As Disciples we affirm that reading and interpreting scripture is every believer’s right and responsibility, but we also affirm that in order to read scripture rightly we must read it together.

Within the universal church,
we receive the gift of ministry
and the light of scripture.

Our ministry is not the sum-total of our individual ministries, but rather our sharing in the common ministry of the whole church – the shared ministry which we together offer to God, to the world, and to one another. [6] Our response to God’s call is always personal, profoundly personal, but never private. Likewise, the Bible is not a book placed in our hands to be read solitarily and interpreted privately.

The Bible is the church’s book, and to read it is to enter a conversation that began long before we first opened its pages, and that extends far beyond our particular place and culture. The Bible is an ecumenical book, and to read it rightly we must read it ecumenically: before we make up our own individual minds, we need to listen to those who have gone before us and those who read scripture in contexts different from our own. [7] We must master the art of listening for the Word of God among the voices of God’s many witnesses.

The Bible is the church’s book, but because the primary mode of receiving the light of scripture is listening, the Bible is also not the church’s book: scripture will always stand as a witness overagainst the church and all its traditions, including our own. To receive the light of scripture means to read and be read, to interpret and be interpreted, to make judgments about the meaning of a text and to be judged by it.

On July 4 Americans celebrate our independence from the dominion of King George III and all tyrants. Freedom is the battle cry; some, but not all chains are broken; some, but not all shackels have been thrown into the deepest sea; and the yoke has been removed from the shoulders of many. Yet on this very day, we hear Jesus who calls out, “Take my yoke upon you.” Our ears still ringing with the music of John Phillip Sousa, we hear an affirmation that speaks of bonds, of yielding, and of servanthood in a kingdom.

In the bonds of Christian faith
we yield ourselves to God
that we may serve the One
whose kingdom has no end.

Those who accept the yoke of Christ yield themselves to God alone; they put off the yoke of earthly rulers and the yoke of worldly care. Yoked together with Christ, they are free and subject to none, and at the same time they are servants of all and subject to every one. [8] As those who strive first for the kingdom of God and don’t worry about food and drink and clothes for tomorrow, disciples are free and independent. [9] As those who submit to one another in love and dedicate themselves to Christ’s mission, disciples are free and mutually dependent – bound together by God’s love and mercy.

Jesus sharply criticizes religious leaders who turn the yoke of freedom into yet another burdensome system of oppression, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.” [10] Jesus sharply criticizes such leaders, little tyrants building their own little kingdoms, and he brings freedom to the oppressed: “Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” [11]

The yoke of the kingdom is easy because it is the law of God fulfilled in love. [12] The yoke of the kingdom is light because it is shared among God’s servants. “Take my yoke, learn from me,” Jesus calls all who are weary and burdened. You who carry more than you can handle, come to me. You who are worn out by too many demands and overwhelmed by ever growing expectations, come to me. You who are trapped in the unending cycles of work-and-spend, come to me. You who long for freedom and hunger for justice, come to me. I will give you rest.

Rest, he says, not respite. Rest is not just a break for those traveling down life’s weary road, it’s the end of that weary road. Rest is the word that speaks of creation’s completion.

And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. [13]

Rest is the kingdom without end.
Rest is the peace of God permeating all of creation.
Rest is the music of heaven filling every nook and cranny of the earth: Blessing, glory, and honor to God, forever.

In the end, our affirmation is not a text of some 170 words.
In the end, our affirmation is our whole being translated into praise:
Blessing, glory, and honor be to God forever. Amen.

[1] See Mark 7:8
[2] Instructions from the Town of Malden, Massachusetts, for a Declaration of Independence http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=238
[3] Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 3 July 1776, “Had a Declaration...” [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive. Massachusetts Historical Society. http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/
[4] See Toulouse, Joined in Discipleship, p. 37
[5] Ibd., pp. 37-38
[6] See Osborn, Faith We Affirm, p. 75
[7] Ibd., p. 21
[8] “A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.” Martin Luther, Concerning Christian Liberty
[9] Matthew 6:25-34
[10] Matthew 23:4
[11] Matthew 11:28-30
[12] See Romans 13:8-10
[13] Genesis 2:2

This Fellow Welcomes Sinners

The film begins with somber scenes from Depression-era, small-town Texas. Somewhere, a congregation is singing “Blessed Assurance,” and as the hymn ends, we see a family at the dinner table saying grace – mom, dad, and their two children. The peace of the Spalding family’s Sunday supper won’t last though.

Mr. Spalding is the sheriff, and he is called to talk some sense into Wiley, a young man who had a couple of drinks too many and is down by the train tracks playing with a gun. Soon, both men are dead: Sheriff Spalding is accidentally shot, and Wiley, who is black, is lynched.

The name of the film is Places in the Heart and it tells the story of Edna Spalding’s struggle to not lose her farm and keep her family together. Times are hard, and lovelessness and prejudice battle relentlessly against decency and friendship: Edna’s brother-in-law, Wayne is unfaithful to Margaret, her sister and best friend. Mr. Denby, the banker, shows no mercy as the date of her mortgage payment draws near and foreclosure looms on the horizon. A group of Klansmen is barely prevented from killing Moze, the black man who has helped her bring in a good crop of cotton. The film depicts a world in the grip of sin, that ungodly power that threatens to destroy whatever love creates and builds.

In the final scene, it is Sunday again and a congregation is gathered for worship. The preacher rises to read the lesson from 1 Corinthians 13, “Love is patient; love is kind, love is not envious or boastful, arrogant or rude. Love never ends.” We watch Margaret quietly putting her hand in Wayne’s, and we see forgiveness at work against unfaithfulness. They celebrate the Lord’s Supper, and Wayne passes the bread and the tray of cups to his wife. The bread and wine continue from hand to hand through the congregation to Mr. Denby, the banker and to Moze, and to some men whose faces we don’t recognize – perhaps because in previous scenes they kept them hidden behind white hoods – and finally to Edna Spalding. She turnes and serves her husband, the sheriff, who is now seated beside her, and he then serves Wiley. “Peace of God,” they say, “Peace of God.” And all is well.

There is hope for us because the love of God is stronger than sin. God’s faithfulness and mercy restore the sabbath peace, and all is well.

At the table of the Lord
we celebrate with thanksgiving
the saving acts and presence of Christ.

We call it the Lord’s Supper, Mass, Holy Communion, Eucharist, or the breaking of the bread, but the first thing we affirm as Disciples is that the table is the Lord’s, not our’s. The supper is the Lord’s, not the church’s. Christ is the host, and we are all guests. Christ is the gift, and we are all beggars. That may well be the hardest thing for us to remember.

When it comes to tables, we have rules. Not just rules about where to put the napkin and what fork to use for the salad. We have family rules about who gets to sit at the dining room table and who has to eat in the kitchen. We have “good society” rules about whom to invite to the dinner party and how to graciously decline an invitation from the wrong kind of people. We have house rules about who gets to eat first and who has to wait. The rich man feasts with his friends, and Lazarus sits outside with the dogs – we know the rules.

Food is much more than just the stuff we need to fuel our bodies. Food is our chance to choose our company. Sharing food is about belonging, about power and privilege. At the table of the Lord, it is Jesus who chooses his company. Some of Jesus’ contemporaries noticed what they considered a significant lack of judgment on his part in choosing the people he ate with.

Jesus was notorious for his table manners. He knew the food rules of his culture; he knew the laws of ritual purity as well as the laws of social status. He didn’t ignore these rules, he broke and obliterated them. He was indeed very careful in choosing the people he ate with, and the absence of judgment some people noticed was intentional.

Jesus proclaimed, “The kingdom of God has come near,” and he healed the sick, cast out demons, fed the hungry, and forgave sins. Jesus proclaimed the nearness of God’s sovereign reign, and wherever he went, it arrived. Eating with people he befriended them and they tasted the grace of God. Breaking bread with sinners, Jesus ended their exclusion from the company of the righteous and they became members of the household of God. Eating and drinking with sinners and tax collectors, Jesus demonstrated “in his own person what acceptance by the merciful God and the forgiveness of sins means: it means being invited to the great festal supper in the kingdom of God. Forgiveness of sins, and eating and drinking in the kingdom of God are two sides of the same thing.”[1]

Not all who witnessed his actions were happy. “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them,” they grumbled.[2] From their lips, it was an expression of pious outrage, but even in their anger they proclaimed the hope of our salvation: Jesus Christ welcomes sinners and eats with them.

On the night before he died, Jesus had a meal with his disciples, one more link in a chain of meals connecting his ministry from Galilee to Jerusalem. During that meal he did what the host was expected to do: he took bread, gave thanks to God, broke it, and gave it to his friends. It was the common way of beginning a dinner. But then he said the words identifying himself with the bread, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”[3]

At the end of the meal he raised the cup and gave thanks to God; it was the common way of ending a dinner. But then he gave it to the disciples and said, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”[4]

He had a meal with his friends – Judas who would betray him, Peter who would deny him, and the others who would abandon him and flee.[5] That night, knowing that the disciples would not come through, Jesus made the supper at his table the visible, tangible, and edible sign of reconciliation. Foreseeing their fear, their helplessness, and their lostness – and we know that their fear is ours, that we are just as helpless and lost as they were; we know that neither friendship nor discipleship are dependable – foreseeing their despair over their failure, he gave them, he gave us the gift of communion with him.

When we break the bread and share the cup in remembrance of his birth, his words and deeds, his death and resurrection, he is with us to strengthen and encourage us, to help us up and to help us through, and to send us anew on our mission of witness and service.

He is also with us to open our eyes. Some have read the gospels and concluded that it was the Jews who are responsible for Jesus’ death. Others read the same gospels and concluded that it was the Romans who are responsible for Jesus’ death. We ask, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” but we need to ask, “Who wasn’t there when we crucified our Lord?” As those who, as often as we eat this bread and drink the cup, proclaim the Lord’s death, we know that we are all responsible.[6] We can’t point fingers at Judas and Peter, Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate, the priests and elders and soldiers and the crowd, because we are them. It was religion, law, politics, and public opinion that worked hand in hand to get rid of him. Sin corrupts our institutions and our best intentions, and we can do our worst when we think we are only doing what is right.

At the table we look at bread and wine, representing God’s gifts of creation and human culture, but we also see creation’s brokenness and the human destruction of relationship to God. We come face to face with God’s peace and human violence. We celebrate with open eyes, knowing that we are sinners, the saving acts and presence of Christ: God does not abandon us to the destructiveness of sin, the destructiveness of our wanting to be human without God. In communion with Christ we are delivered from the night of God-forsakenness and from the triumph of sin and death.

At the table, the past becomes present but no longer to imprison us in the memory of our failures and our broken promises, but to free us with the knowledge of God’s mercy. The future also becomes present, the sabbath of fulfillment and complete joy lights up the present moment, drives away the shadows of fear and doubt, and we are ready once again to be God’s people in the world.

At the table of the Lord we receive and proclaim God’s unconditional acceptance of human beings who have fallen under the power of sin, and in Christ’s name we invite the whole world to this celebration of what it is to become – one reconciled humanity in God’s new creation.
Times are hard, lovelessness and selfishness battle as mercilessly as ever against neighborliness and friendship. But the Supper is a living memory of God’s power to create and redeem, and among those who gather and serve each other in the name of Christ it announces the new day.

“Peace of God,” they say, “Peace of God.”

And there’s a seat at the table for every last one of us.

[1] Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, p. 115
[2] Luke 15:2
[3] Luke 22:19
[4] Matthew 26:27-28
[5] See Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion, p. 71
[6] See 1 Corinthians 11:26

Joined in Discipleship

There’s a story attributed to the late George McLeod about a small Scottish town in which there were five churches. Each church was located in just the right place in terms of its social and cultural characteristics. The Baptist church was near the river, the Salvation Army was by the fire station, the Methodist church was next to the gas station, the Episcopal church was by the drapery store, and the Presbyterian church was halfway between the ice house and the bank.[1]

We may as well laugh at the tragedy of our division.

The survivor of a ship wreck was washed up on the beach of a small and what he thought, deserted island. To his surprise, he was welcomed by a man with a nice, leathery tan and sun-bleached dreadlocks.
“I came here a long time ago, after the crash of Oceanic flight 5614. Let me show you my village,” the man said, pointing to three huts under the palm trees. “This is my house. This is where I sleep and find shelter when it rains.” They walked over to the next hut, and he said with considerable pride, “And this, this is my church; here I come every Sunday morning to worship God.” His visitor nodded and pointed to the third building, “What’s that?”
“Oh, that’s the church I used to attend; but two years ago I got mad and I left.”

We may as well laugh at the scandal of our division.

Christian faith cannot thrive in religious solitariness, and our salvation lies in our being made part of the household of God. Our faith cannot be reduced to select commitments based on pure private judgment, freed from authority and the company of others. However, the history of the churches of the reformation paints a different picture: generally speaking, we like to define freedom in terms of personal preference; we are quick to split and slow to bear one another with patience.

Mark Toulouse, professor of American Religious History at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, TX wrote an excellent study on Disciples identity, and he named the book Joined in Discipleship. In the introduction he writes,

In a very real sense, we are ‘joined in discipleship’ with our denominational ancestors. Our stories carry on the narratives of their stories. What they began resides in us and moves unsteadily toward the future, even as it did in their own time. From out of their future and our past, we still find inspiration to proclaim the essence of the church’s unity and to expresss our despair over the reality of the church’s fragmentation.[2]

We are joined in discipleship in a very real sense, not just with our denominational ancestors but with Presbyterians across the street, Methodists up the street, Episcopalians down the street, Churches of Christ, Catholics, Baptists, you name it, Christians in North America, Asia, Africa, in every time and place. We are joined in discipleship because church was never our idea. We are joined together because on our own we are not able to overcome the forces that alienate and divide us – selfishness, prejudice, envy, laziness, you name it. We are joined together in obedience to Christ because the church is God’s initiative, not ours.

God created humankind for communion with God and each other, but we are not content being God’s creatures. We want to be gods ourselves and we turn away from God in disobedience and rebellion. Sin is many things, but at its core it is nothing but the absence of what God intends. It is the deep alienation that spreads where trust in God is broken.

We are created for communion with God and each other, but our lives reflect and continue the story of Adam and Eve, of Cain and Abel. Like our first parents, we question the trustworthiness of God’s word and follow voices that seem to suggest what’s in our own best interest or, in these days of rampant consumerism, just more to our liking. Like the first siblings, we seek God’s blessing for our work, but envy and resentment are never far away: sin is lurking at the door, and we cannot master it.[3]

Sin breaks the communion of life which God intends for us. It turns the blessed conviviality of creation into the fractured madness of warring siblings, clans, tribes, and nations seeking fullness of life in self-absorption against God, against one another, and against God’s other creatures.
There is a perverse unity in our universal refusal to trust God’s word, to be each other’s brothers and sisters, and to till and keep God’s garden. “There is no one who is righteous, not even one!” the apostle Paul cries out. “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their paths, and the way of peace they have not known.”[4]

But God is faithful. God does not abandon the good creation and the marvelous creatures made in God’s image. God calls and sends witnesses, God chooses and redeems a people, God forgives sin and upholds the covenant of love.

We affirm that Jesus Christ is God’s definitive answer to our sin; he is and does what God intended all people to be and do. He embodies God’s faithfulness to humankind and humanity’s faithful response. In him, in his life and teachings, his death and resurrection, divine love overcomes sin. We follow him, and our feet are guided into the way of peace.[5]

Christ has made us his own, and in a very real sense, we are no longer defined by who and what we have become following our own paths, but by him and by the way he chose in freedom and in love. We are no longer the results of our sinful, fractured past, but God’s own people.

Through faith, we are drawn into the fullness of life God intended in the beginning, and we are called to be God’s instrument for the mending of the world. To be a disciple of Jesus is to be given a place and part, and it is to take one’s place and part in the most demanding and rewarding enterprise of the world: the ministry of reconciliation, the proclamation of peace.[6] And to be given a place and part in that mission always means to take the place and part of one’s calling, and not necessarily one’s choosing. It means to be given a new life smack in the middle of God’s own people.

In the communion of the Holy Spirit
we are joined together in discipleship
and in obedience to Christ.

The church is God’s idea, God’s initiative, not ours. God seeks and, overcoming sin, creates communion with humans. God loves. God loves without condition and therefore without consideration of human worthiness. God loves completely alienated people who barely have a Yes left in them. God’s love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, and faithfulness is wakened.[7] God loves and reconciles the resistant, rebellious, self-absorbed and lost human beings and creates communion. The communion of the Holy Spirit is God’s initiative, not ours. God reaches out and we respond. God speaks and we answer. God gives and we receive.

The Holy Spirit is given to us, but not as some kind of personal religious possession, nor in a succession of moments of intense religious enthusiasm. The Holy Spirit never becomes something we have, but remains a gift for good, a gift we enjoy as long as we receive it. The Spirit is the presence of God working in the depth of the human heart transforming and renewing us. The Spirit permeates the world of death with new life and the breath of resurrection. The Spirit is the Lord who in freedom and faithfulness becomes present to the creature, creating and sustaining the communion of life. We stop receiving, our faithfulness withers. We stop receiving, our life withers.

There are several words the English speaking traditions of the church have adopted straight from the Greek New Testament, words like baptism and eucharist, or deacon. Another one I wish had made it into common church usage is the word koinonia. It is a beautiful word, and it is translated into English, depending on context and often the translator’s preference, as fellowship, communion, sharing or participation.

Koinonia speaks of our fellowship with God and with each other, of our sharing the sufferings of Christ, of our participation in ministry through mission funding, of the sharing of our resources to alleviate the needs of others, and of our common enjoyment of the gifts of God.[8] Koinonia speaks of our being joined together in discipleship and in obedience to Christ, not by our various and fickle personal preferences, but by the Holy Spirit.

On the day of Pentecost, those who welcomed Peter’s message were baptized, and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and koinonia, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.[9]

Every Sunday at the end of our worship service we hear the benediction,
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the koinonia of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.[10]

The church is God’s initiative, and not what we make of it. Because we have been brought into the koinonia of the Holy Spirit, we belong to one another and are responsible to one another as brothers and sisters of Christ. The story of the church is the continuing story of the love of God at work in the world, drawing people together by the Holy Spirit – into koinonia with God and each other, into “the blessed conviviality that sang Creation’s seventh sunrise.”[11]

[1] Wallace Alston, The Church of the Living God, p. 51
[2] Mark Toulouse, Joined in Discipleship, p. 2
[3] See Genesis 3:1 and 4:1-7
[4] Romans 3:10, 15-17
[5] See Luke 1:79
[6] See 2 Corinthians 5; Ephesians 2:17
[7] See Romans 5:5ff.
[8] See 1 John 1:3-7; Phil 3:10; 2 Cor 8:4; Hebr 13:16; 1 Cor 10:16
[9] Acts 2:42 see also the description of that koinonia in the following verses
[10] 2 Corinthians 13:13
[11] Wendell Berry, Sabbaths, p. 9

New Life

On Pentecost, Jews and Jewish converts from around the world were in Jerusalem. It was a great day: just about every language spoken under heaven could be heard in the streets, in restaurants, markets, and the courtyards of the temple. Translators were in high demand, and those who couldn’t find one used gestures and facial expressions to communicate, some even drew pictures in the dust or on wax tablets. It was like the whole world had come to Jerusalem, and the noise and the chatter were exhilarating to some, exhausting to others.

On that day something amazing and perplexing happened: the disciples of Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, began to speak in other languages. The whole world was gathered in Jerusalem, and they heard, each in their own native language, the disciples speaking about God’s deeds of power.

Something new and unheard of was on the loose, something that transcended cultural differences and language barriers. “What does this mean?” people asked, and the apostle Peter preached the good news:

Jesus of Nazareth, a man through whom God had done deeds of power, wonders and signs, a man who had been crucified and killed – this Jesus God raised up, making him both Lord and Messiah.

Now when they heard this, they said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” How does one live in this new world where Jesus is Lord? What is the proper response to what God has done in Jesus Christ? Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.”[1]
Repent and be baptized, for on the cross our sin is judged and forgiven.
Repent and be baptized, for God bears the deadly consequences of our alienation from God and from one another and gives us new life.
Repent and be baptized, for in Jesus’ death all that must die has died: everything old has passed away; everything has become new!
The message that transcends cultural differences and language barriers is the good news of Jesus Christ: he is God’s gift of new life for Israel and the nations and all of creation. In response to that good word we turn away from the old ways of the old world and let ourselves be immersed in the life of Christ.

Through baptism into Christ
we enter into newness of life
and are made one with the whole people of God.

Baptism is nothing less than the whole story of God and the people of God condensed into one moment:
It is the sea through which God’s people escape to freedom and in which the powers that oppress and enslave them drown;
It is the river God’s people cross to enter the promised land;
It is the flood from which a renewed creation emerges;
It is the call of John in the wilderness and the obedience of Jesus;
It is the water that breaks at the birth of a new humanity;
It is the washing of feet at the end of a long journey and the bath on the eve of the great sabbath;
It is the river of life that runs from the throne of God.

We discover the whole story of God and God’s people in the sacrament of baptism – not because water ties it all together so beautifully, but because Jesus does. In his life and teachings, his death and resurrection we find God’s purposes revealed and God’s promises fulfilled. In baptism we give thanks to God for choosing us in Christ and drawing us into the divine life, and we praise God by living no longer for ourselves but in Christ.

When we answer Christ’s call to discipleship and kingdom mission, our old life comes to an end and our new life begins. The apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans speaks of baptism as a burial:
“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”[2]

We affirm that through Christ everything has become new, and in baptism we embrace that newness.
In Christ our sins are forgiven – wash them away, O God.
In Christ our old self has died – bury our selfishness, every last remnant of it, O God.
In Christ death is overcome – raise us up, O God, raise us up.

In the ancient church, new disciples would take off their clothes and enter the water of baptism naked, leaving their old life behind like a pile of old clothes; when they emerged from the waters, a deacon would dress them in a white robe.

“As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ,” Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”[3]

The white robe speaks of purity and heavenly citizenship and it declares that distinctions of ethnicity, class, status, and gender no longer apply.

But Christ is not a new outfit we put on and take off as we please. Baptism incorporates us in the body of Christ, and by being made one with him we are also made one with all for whom he died, one with the whole people of God.

Baptism is deeply personal: to the believer it is the tangible and memorable assurance of God’s love and forgiveness as well as the tangible and memorable expression of God’s claim on his or her life.

But baptism is also deeply communal: newness of life is not a private adventure but life as a member of God’s covenant community, life with the brothers and sisters of Christ.

In baptism the whole story of God and the people of God is condensed in one moment.
God acts by embracing us as God’s own, incorporating us into the body of Christ, and giving us the Holy Spirit. The church acts by obeying the command of Christ and welcoming new disciples as brothers and sisters and equipping them for ministry. And the individual believer acts by responding to God’s call in Christ, renouncing the false gods of this world, and committing to a life of discipleship.

As Disciples we are part of a church tradition that affirms that ordinarily people old enough to speak for themselves are the appropriate candidates for baptism. For decades in the 19th century, according to Ronald Osborn, one of the main topics Disciples preachers discussed in their sermons was baptism. “They delighted to tell the story about Alexander Campbell’s perplexity after the birth of his first child. Should the little girl be baptized or not?” Osborn writes. Campbell had a Presbyterian background but had begun examining closely every doctrine and tradition of the church against the witness of the New Testament.

What he was debating with himself was whether or not infant baptism has any sanction in the scriptures. (…) Campbell studied every passage which refers to baptism. After days of pondering this matter, he reached three conclusions: First, baptism is for responsible believers only, not for infants. Second, baptism means immersion. Third, he himself, though christened in infancy, had not been baptized. So not only did he not baptize his infant daughter, but he and his father [Thomas] and their wives went down to Buffalo Creek to be immersed, with a Baptist preacher officiating. [4]

Campbell’s conclusions determined Disciples practice for generations, far into the 20th century. Disciples congregations baptized believers by immersion and rebaptized people who had been baptized as infants or who had not been immersed.

But then some of our leaders began to realize that by immersing people who had already been baptized, be it by pouring or sprinkling or christening, we were not only calling into question the validity of other church traditions but God’s own action in their rites of Christian initiation. As a consequence, we became a little less certain of our own certainty and more interested in the theological reasoning supporting baptismal practices we had dismissed before. Through ecumenical dialogues with other churches we began to see the truth and beauty of their witness.

When the church baptizes infants it celebrates the grace of God who claims us in Christ as God’s own without condition: when we are little more than bundles of need and utter dependence we are already surrounded and held by God’s yes.

When the church baptizes believers it celebrates the grace of God who calls us to live in faithfulness: we are honored covenant partners whose free response God invites and awaits.

By studying the apostolic tradition together we learned to affirm our faith together: through baptism with water in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit we become members of the universal church, the body of Christ.

On Pentecost, the whole world was gathered in Jerusalem, and for a moment cultural differences and language barriers didn’t disappear, but became fully transparent, and all ears could hear clearly the one story beneath, behind, and between all the stories: the story of Jesus, the good news of God’s salvation. For a moment, God’s future lit up the present, and the New Jerusalem, the City of God became manifest among the nations.

“Brothers, what should we do?” the people asked. And the apostles answered, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.”

[1] Acts 2:4-39
[2] Romans 6:3-4
[3] Galatians 3:27-28
[4] Ronald Osborn, The Faith We Affirm, p. 59

The Fabric of Creation

We rejoice in God,
maker of heaven and earth,
and in the covenant of love
which binds us to God and one another.
The Preamble to the Design is as close as Disciples of Christ have yet come to developing something like a denominational statement of faith. Historically we have avoided creedal statements; we happily confess with believers of all times and places that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”[1] But once that is said, we pause and take a deep breath, somewhat reluctant to press on: this is the essential statement of Christian faith, the only affirmation necessary for membership in the church.
We are reluctant because once we start unfolding that good confession – and unfold it we must in order to know how to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ in our time and place – once we start unfolding what this confession entails, we get into passionate debates. And in debates – there’s plenty of historical evidence for this – we have a tendency to end the conversation prematurely, draw lines, and build fences that define our side of the divide as the camp of true belief.
Sometimes, as in the case of apartheid in South Africa or the conflict between church and state in Nazi Germany, drawing those lines is not only necessary but the only faithful thing to do. But far too often in the history of the church, this tendency has led to stubborn division and a false sense of righteousness and holiness on either side of the fence: We know the truth about God and the world and the church, and you don’t.
When it comes to standing together and declaring, “This we believe,” Disciples are quick to affirm our faith in Jesus Christ and equally quick to invite fellow believers and non-believers to discuss the meaning and the implications of that confession. You could say that from a Disciples perspective the passionate pursuit of the truth is important; but equally important is the responsibility on the part of every participant in the debate to pay attention to the conversation itself: are we listening with the same fervor that fuels our speaking? Are we creating and maintaining dialogues that allow all voices to be heard and considered? When we say, “We believe” we don’t say it to end the discussion – “This is how it is; end of debate.” – but to invite, encourage, and facilitate further conversation.
Believe is a tricky word. We say, “I believe in God, maker of heaven and earth,” and it sounds just like somebody saying, “I believe in UFO’s” or asking, “Do you believe in ghosts?” It sounds like we declare that there’s something ‘out there’ whose existence is doubtful, and where the evidence is still hotly disputed.[2]
But when a mother says to her child the night before the TCAP’s or some final exam, “I believe in you” it is obvious that she is not making a statement about the child’s existence or non-existence. The mother affirms her confidence in his ability to keep his anxiety in check and apply what he has learned in weeks and months of study. Her words affirm and strengthen the relationship of deep trust between them, a relationship that doesn’t depend on a high score because it isn’t defined by success or failure. When we say, “We believe in God,” that’s the neighborhood we’re in.
We speak of a relationship of deep trust around which we build our lives. We speak of a reality that envelops our days and nights, our beginnings and our endings, our fears, our doubts, our hopes. We speak of One who has said to us, “I believe in you.” We have become so accustomed to thinking of God in arguments or rational proofs, listing a series of concepts in systematic order,[3] when what we are really saying is a simple response, “We believe in you too.”
Interestingly, we don’t literally say “we believe” anywhere in this affirmation. Instead we say, we confess, we proclaim, we accept, we rejoice, we celebrate, we receive, we serve – lest we forget that our belief is not a set of statements we subscribe to but a life lived in response to the One who gives life. We confess that Jesus is the Christ, we proclaim him Lord and Savior of the world, and the first thing we say about God is, “We rejoice.”
I could think of a whole host of other verbs we could insert here: We worship God, maker of heaven and earth. We live in gratitude to God. We bow before the mystery of God, we love God, we seek to obey God. All of these are good, right and true, and we could easily add tens or even hundreds more. Instead we say, “We rejoice in God, maker of heaven and earth.” Affirming our faith in God the creator is first and foremost an affirmation of joy.
What do people do when they rejoice? They smile, they laugh, they clap their hands and sing, they dance, they celebrate, they live life in fullness – we affirm that the chief end of God’s creation is joy, the rejoicing of God’s creatures in their creator.
The Lord who made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them; the Lord who continues to give life to each new generation of living things, looks at the world with delight.[4] Now some view God as a mechanic who has designed and built a fabulous machine which, once it’s been turned on, pretty much runs on its own. Creation, they say, is something that happened a long, long time ago, and the creator is watching from a distance as things unfold in the universe. The biblical witness points in a different direction: God is not only interested in seeing how things unfold but deeply and intimately involved in the life of God’s creatures.[5] God’s relationship to the world is not exhausted by flipping a switch to set things in motion – and it doesn’t matter at all whether you prefer to call that switch the Big Bang or Seven Days.
Life is a gift given to the world at every moment, and God, delighting in the goodness of creation, desires and awaits our response: our rejoicing in the goodness of the gift, our wonder and gratitude, our joyful Yes.
Life flourishes in a cosmic economy of gifts given and received. The fabric of creation is life given with generosity and delight and life received and shared with rejoicing. The fabric of creation is the word of life spoken and a symphony of joyful praise echoing between earth and heaven. The fabric of creation is the covenant of love which binds God to God’s creatures and all living things to their creator.
Now some view the world as “unclaimed property”[6] – a wilderness to be subdued and colonized, exploited, sucked empty, and eventually left behind. But those actions don’t reflect the will and desire of God. The world is not unclaimed property, but God’s creation, and the God who calls us and all things into being awaits our faithful response. The maker of heaven and earth desires that we live our lives in a manner that is good for us and all living things.
Of all God’s creatures, human beings alone are capable of choosing not to receive and return the gift of life. Of all God’s creatures, human beings alone are capable of claiming to be self-made men and women, solitary masters of their fate. But likewise, of all God’ creatures, human beings alone are capable of responding in freedom to God’s self-giving love. God says to us, “I will be your God and you will be my people,” and we affirm in response, “You are our God and we are your people.”[7] God freely gives the gift of life and we receive and return it in freedom, in wonder, in gratitude and joy.
Creation is not a well-designed and skillfully crafted clockwork amongst whose gears and wheels we have been assigned our proper place like parts in a machine. Nor is creation the work of a distant divine master mechanic with whom we compete for control.
Creation is the fabric of relationships in which life flourishes as it is freely given and received. Creation is the embodiment of God’s covenant of love, and its chief end is the delight of the creator and the joy of all creatures.
This is not the last word on the matter; it’s how I understand what we affirm as members of the Christian church.

[1] Matthew 16:16
[2] Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust, p. 5
[3] Osborn, The Faith We Affirm, p. 42
[4] Acts 4:24; Ps 104:28ff; Gen 1:31
[5] E.g. Ps 139:13-18; Jer 1:5
[6] Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation (San Francisco: Harper&Row, 1985) p. 3
[7] See e.g. Ex 6:7; Dtn 29:13; Heb 8:10; Rev 21:7

Who do you say that I am?

I remember the room we were in, but I don’t recall what day it was or what time of day. Richard and I were sitting across from each other in comfortable chairs, a small table between us. We had made the appointment to get to know each other – we had been introduced only a week earlier, and we would be working together for a local non-profit organization.
How do you get to know somebody? Think about the chit-chat that develops at parties where we take turns asking questions, “So, what do you do for a living? Are you married? Do you have kids?” If we don’t end up talking about our kids, we talk about our dogs or the play-offs.
The conversation that day was different, though. Richard didn’t ask a single question; all he said was, “Tell me your story,” and for the next hour he listened.
Of course I didn’t know at first where to start, but it didn’t take long and I was talking about the people and things I care most about – my family, my faith, my passions and struggles, my fears and hopes. Whenever there were a few seconds of silence, Richard didn’t jump in but simply waited for me to pick up another thread I wanted to follow.
We met again a few days later, and now it was his turn to tell me his story – the neighborhood on the southside of Chicago where he grew up, his two little sisters who adored their big brother, his love of music, his passion for learning and teaching. We spent only two hours together that week, but we got to know each other at a deep and meaningful level because we gave each other the space to tell our story. I came away from that experience knowing that one of the greatest gifts we can give another person is our presence and the invitation, “Tell me your story.”
In the 1960s, the opportunity arose for our church to tell our story. During that decade many Disciples congregations in North America arrived at a historic conclusion: in order to remain faithful to their calling as Christian churches they had to balance their cherished congregational freedom with structures of mutual responsibility and accountability. After years of prayerful study and discernment the congregations recognized regional and larger geographical expressions of the church and decided to let the organizational structure of the Disciples of Christ reflect that reality. In those years, the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) became the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Decades of ecumenical dialogue with churches from around the world had played a key role in these developments, and now these same churches were eager to meet their newly restructured friends. “Tell us your story,” they said, giving us the opportunity to tell the whole world who we are. And of course we didn’t know at first where to start:
When we tell the story of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) do we talk about the “founding fathers” of the Restoration Movement, Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone and Walter Scott? Or do we talk about the social realities of the American frontier after the Revolutionary War, or the spiritual fervor of the Second Great Awakening?
No, we tell our story by talking about the things that are most important to us, and we begin at the beginning:
As members of the Christian Church,
We confess that Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of the living God,
and proclaim him Lord and Savior of the world.
This is the opening line of the Disciples Affirmation, also known as the Preamble to the Design.
The very first line, innocent and introductory as it may sound, is a profound statement.
“As members of the Christian Church, we confess…” A confession is a deeply personal thing, but it is not private. We don’t get up, one after another, stating, ‘As a member of the Christian Church, I confess…’ listing our beliefs in order of personal preference. This is our confession, not the sum-total of our various individual theological opinions, nor the confession of one or of a small group that all the others have to subscribe to in order to belong. When we say this, we speak with the discipline of a church that is one and with the freedom of those who never stop exploring the meaning of the gospel for our time (that exploration implies debate, disagreement, and wrestling to arrive at a common understanding).
The “we” who speak here do not claim to be the church nor do we emphasize our particularity by saying, As Disciples of Christ, we confess… The “we” who make this affirmation speak with Christian boldness and with denominational humility. We refer to ourselves as the Christian Church, and in brackets, Disciples of Christ. The way we write our name speaks of our hope that one day all churches will affirm our faith as members of the Christian Church – and in brackets, Presbyterian, United Methodist, Assembly of God, Baptist or Anglican. The “we” who affirm our faith with this statement do not wish to create an “us” over against “them,” a community of true believers over against heretic outsiders, or an avantgarde ahead of God’s slower people. We do speak from a particular perspective, but with this affirmation we attempt to express what all who confess Christ can affirm together.
“We confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
We say who we are by saying who Jesus is. When invited to tell our story, we talk about Jesus, because without him there would be no “we” beyond our narrow familial, tribal, or national allegiances. We talk about Jesus, because we cannot imagine our lives without him, but we don’t stand up and declare, “This is how it is and you better believe it or else.” We confess, and our confession is both bold and humble:
Responding to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” we boldly stand side by side with Peter saying, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” affirming that in Jesus God’s purposes are revealed and fulfilled; and at the same time we stand humbly with generations of disciples because we know that our lives limp far behind what we confess with our lips and believe in our hearts. We make our confession with the boldness of God’s sons and daughters and with the joyful humility of those who know that we are loved despite our denials and betrayals.
When we confess Jesus to be the Christ, God’s Anointed One, we don’t claim to know what it takes to be God’s Messiah; we don’t claim to have a detailed job description for this position and that after a careful interview process we have established that this candidate has all the necessary qualifications – no, we stutter and sing in wonder because in Jesus’ life and teachings, his death and resurrection we find life in fullness and we see the glory of God. We confess that Jesus is the Christ, because God raised him from the dead, inaugurating the kingdom of heaven on earth, and because in all our conversations about God and the world, sin and forgiveness, about the meaning of life and the demands of love we find ourselves again and again turning to Jesus.
We proclaim him Lord and Savior of the world. This Jesus whom God raised from the dead sits on the throne as ruler of the universe and judge of the nations – again we stutter and sing in wonder. What we proclaim is that after sin and death, fear and violence, political maneuvering and religious rectitude have had their way with the world, love is Lord of heaven and earth, Jesus is Lord – and all the other contenders for the throne are not.
Proclaiming him Savior of the world we affirm three things: the world needs saving; the world is worth saving; and Jesus is the Savior.
To say that the world needs saving is almost stating the obvious; anybody can see that life is not what it could be and should be, that things are not the way they’re supposed to be. But to declare that the world is worth saving still suprises many. We affirm that this world is God’s good creation and that God desires for life to flourish in peace. Earth and the creatures that inhabit it are not just the backdrop for the drama of saving the souls of human beings, but are themselves objects of God’s delight. The world is worth saving because God loves it.
The church has always affirmed that Jesus is the Savior, but it has never developed one definitive position on just how Jesus accomplishes that salvation. The New Testament offers a variety of answers, and that had to be expected since we relate to Jesus in a variety of ways.
We look to Jesus and we see the beauty of creation and its brokenness healed; we see sin and suffering and we see wholeness restored; we see oppression and torture and the power of violence overcome; we look at the cross and we see all that is wrong with the world and we see the love of God who will not abandon the world. We look at the life and teachings, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and in that story we see the story of God and the world. We relate to Jesus in a variety of ways, but Jesus relates to us and all things as Savior.
When invited to tell our story, we say who we are by saying who Jesus is, and through affirming who Jesus is we discover and affirm who we are:
In Christ’s name and by his grace
we accept our mission of witness
and service to all people.
Our confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God unfolds not in words, be they spoken, written, sung or shouted, but in lives lived. To proclaim Jesus as Lord and Savior of the world is to say with our lives our small Yes in response to God’s great Yes. Because of Jesus we live no longer for ourselves but for others, and through our lives of witness and service the love of God touches, heals, and restores the world. That doesn’t make of us co-saviors, but witnesses: our life together points to the One in whose name and by whose grace we found life. Our story, by the grace of God points to the story of Jesus.

Sermon Series

Beginning June 1, I will preach a series of six sermons on what's known as the Disciples Affirmation or the Preamble.

We use this text in worship as an affirmation of faith, and I have wanted to spend a little more time with it for quite a while: I love how it breaks open the often misunderstood "I believe" into a colorful, multi-facetted "we confess, proclaim, accept, rejoice, celebrate, receive..." Every time I read it, I hear an invitation to join a conversation and a particular way of life.

This is not a statement of beliefs that declares, "This is how things are, and here is where you sign." It sounds a lot more like, "Allow us to introduce ourselves."

When we think about who we are, or talk about who we are to be, we find ourselves returning again and again to the practices and conversations outlined in these 171 words. This is how we strive to live in relationship with God, with other people, and with the world.

Summer Nights

Summer nights - here's to some dark ones! Hope you won't have to burn a barrel of oil to find a spot where you can actually see the stars.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/20/070820fa_fact_owen?currentPage=all

The Journey - Phase II

May 16-18, 2008
The Journey – Our Second Weekend

Vine Street's second Journey weekend with George Bullard will be defined by two major events:

On Saturday, May 17, we will receive the report of the results of our April weekend. George has collected and evaluated all our input and his notes, and now it’s time for us to look at the emerging picture. We will meet 9am-4pm in the Fellowship Hall. Everyone is invited to participate, and even if you didn’t attend the first weekend, you will enjoy this workshop. We will have a continental breakfast, lunch, and snacks. Childcare will be available.

To sign up for the Saturday workshop complete this online form.

On Sunday, May 18, following the 10:45 am worship service and the celebration of our graduates, we will gather for a catered lunch in the Fellowship Hall. After lunch, George will introduce us to the Prayer Triplets you may have heard or read about, and talk about the significance of the Summer of Prayer for our continuing Journey. All members and friends are invited, since we want the greatest number possible of Vine Streeters to be a part of the Summer of Prayer. Childcare will be available.

To sign up for the Sunday workshop complete this online form.

Are you still wondering if the Prayer Triplets are something you might want to do? We encourage you to attend the Sunday lunch and meeting, and any questions you might still have will be answered. Here are the basics:

• Vine Street members and friends will meet in groups of three, ten times between Memorial Day and Labor Day (hence the name, Summer of Prayer).


• Each triplet will be responsible for scheduling and facilitating their ten meetings, and there will be a detailed outline for each of the ten approximately 90-minute sessions.


• Prayer is a significant part of each meeting, but the prayer time is informed by open dialogue about our dreams and visions for Vine Street.


• The groups are arranged to reflect different age generations, tenure in the participants’ connection with Vine Street, church backgrounds, and theological perspectives.


• Participants commit to enter into a no-exit relationship with two other Vine Streeters, i.e., each person in a triplet will agree to stay actively connected with their partners for this phase of The Journey.

To sign up for a prayer triplet, complete this online form.

Sing Us A Parable

This is the "Honey, I shrunk the poster" ad for next Sunday's Children's Musical at Vine Street.

Grown in the Sun, written and directed by Andra Moran.

They'll be singing us a parable during worship, and it will be fabulous.

Wanna come?

We'll save you a seat until 10:30 AM.

Worship begins at 10:45 AM.

Darfur Olympics

It's good and right to ask the President of the United States not to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing - but what if we all told the Chinese government that we won't be watching?

We have watched the violence in Darfur for so long, we have asked, we have protested, we have pleaded - only to notice that the Chinese government didn't use its significant influence in Khartoum to end the atrocities.

Will you send President Hu of China a letter to let him know that you won't be watching?

Will you tell NBC that you won't be watching?

NBC has paid a lot of money for the exclusive broadcasting rights for the United States - you have the power to turn off your TV on the day of the opening ceremony. Use the time to be with friends, pray for peace, or play with your kids.

The Journey - A Spiritual Strategic Adventure

None of us can recall the days when Vine Street Christian Church began, but we remember.

It was in 1828, about one year after Alexander Campbell’s first visit to Nashville that members of the Nashville Baptist Church nullified their founding charter and reconstituted themselves as the Nashville Church of the Disciples of Christ.

This year, we remember 180 years of ministry in Nashville – from our doorsteps to the ends of the earth. We can look back on 180 years of Christian witness, because generation after generation, this congregation has faced the challenges of the time with courage and responded faithfully.

Throughout the years, Vine Street has been attentive to the changing demands of the changing times, and obedient to God’s call to embody and proclaim the kingdom. I cannot imagine a more appropriate way to observe an anniversary than to take time to listen for God’s call; to do in our time what generations before us have done in theirs.

• What does God call us to be and do?
• Who does God call us to become?
• What is the future into which God calls us to live?

Beginning the weekend of April 4-7, we will embark on a journey of discovery; a journey that consists of careful listening, disciplined prayer, imaginative story telling, and stepping out on faith. We have found an experienced coach to assist us in setting the course for Vine Street’s future. George Bullard is a Christian leadership coach and a ministry partner with The Columbia Partnership. He will be at Vine Street on April 4-7, the first of four weekends that will mark stations on the way.

On Friday evening, April 4, he will introduce us to the Spiritual Strategic Journey; on Saturday, April 5, he will meet with several focus groups; on Sunday, April 6, he will worship with us and watch how we’re “being Vine Street” on Sunday mornings. There will be other meetings with key leaders, but those details are neither urgent nor important at this point.

Remembering 180 years of our mission and witness is both humbling and empowering. Envisioning the next 10 years of our ministry could be intimidating – but not for those who listen to God’s call and trust the Spirit’s movement. Let The Journey begin!

Good Friday at Vine Street

In many ways, Good Friday is just another Friday. For most of us it's a regular work day; for many students, it's part of Spring break. If you're one of the working people, perhaps you'll have a chance to go to a church during lunch break (Vine Street participates in a community Good Friday service every year; this year it is at 12noon at Hillwood Presbyterian Church); prayer is still the best way to enter the somber reality of a day when we remember the execution of Jesus by Roman authorities, and we wonder why in the world we call that day good.

I think we should wonder a long time before we adopt that name too readily, so eager to wash away with quick answers the horror at what we human beings are capable of doing to each other. The depth of human rebellion against a merciful God is what I see in the cross, and there's nothing good about that. Institutions of government and religion that were established to uphold justice and practice righteousness, exposed as systems of brutal power, that is what I see in the cross. Perhaps we call that Friday good because it helps us see the truth about ourselves?

Out of the depth of that death, God called forth new life, a new creation, a world in which Christ is alive and the mercy and love of God are known and proclaimed to the ends of the earth.
This year, we will have our baptism retreat on Good Friday. The candidates who wish to be baptized on Easter morning, gather at 2pm for an evening of fellowship, study, and worship. Since in baptism we are immersed in Christ's death and resurrection so that we might live in newness of life as members of his church, Good Friday offers itself as a day to reflect on the endings and beginnings we associate with our baptism.

The conclusion of our baptism preparation is a worship pilgrimage modeled after the stations of the cross. We walk in the way of Christ as those who have been called to follow and sent to serve, and our pilgrimage through the rooms and halls of the church is a symbol of our life of discipleship. In past years, that worship was attended only by the baptismal candidates, their parents, the Elders, and the ministerial staff. This year, we open it to the entire congregation as part our Good Friday observance. The way of the cross begins at 7pm in the fellowship hall, we travel in groups, and we all arrive in the sanctuary shortly after 8pm for a time of prayer. I believe this will be very meaningful to our baptismal candidates as they conclude their preparation for baptism and church membership, and I know that it will be equally meaningful for the rest of us who seek to know the depth from which the joy of Easter rises.