Pastor Musings
6/15/10 Pledge of Allegiance Well, I recently found myself all alone in one of our small groups. The Coffee Chatters discuss a variety of issues every Tuesday morning at church. On this particular Tuesday a member mentioned that she had been disturbed by the report that a young child was refusing to speak the pledge of allegiance until ‘don’t as don’t tell’ was repealed. She was not happy about a child being given the option of not saying the pledge. At which point I naively mentioned that I do not say the pledge. That did it! I was treated kindly but it was clear that my not saying the pledge was troublesome to the group. Questions in sued. How long have you not said the pledge? About ten years. Would you pick up arms to protect your country? No. Do you think you should be allowed to vote? Yes. Do you make your children say the pledge? No. Do you let them say it? Yes. And so on. Let me explain my position. First, I pledge my allegiance solely to God in Jesus or more bluntly, to the God of Love. This should be enough for anyone in my opinion. If America is acting out of the best of her possibilities then she and I are united. If America is acting out of less than the best that she can be then she and I are not at one. I feel no need to either universally praise or universally condemn the USA. Second, I do not see the point of pledging the allegiance to the flag because as it is ‘under God’ I have already declared my allegiance to God in Jesus-so why be redundant. The fact that so many Christian Americans are disturbed by my not saying the pledge is a sign that there is a need to be a certain type of christian while living in America. I presume the American kind of Christian-though to be honest I am not sure exactly what that is. Third, though I see really nothing disturbing about the pledge of allegiance I also don’t see anything necessary about it either. Justice and liberty for all are not American values. Rather they are essential gifts given to all people by God , thus are already important to me under reason number one above. Fourth, it is possible that military service men and women need to pledge the allegiance since they voluntarily give up their privilege to serve God and God alone. They are in effect serving the notion of the better good focused through the commander in chief that happens to be in power at any given time. The extent that this greater good at any particular point in history is in the best spirit of God or not is a debatable point but their individual conscience on the subject doesn’t matter. They are to do what they are ordered. I refuse to give up my right to be true to my conscience. What does all this mean? I wonder if my generation is more likely to appreciate my position versus the older generation that was present during the Coffee Chat? Are we so much more pluralistic that the Pledge doesn’t illicit the same gut response among people my age as it does people of the older generation? What about July 4th and the great holidays of our country that celebrate America? Well, not surprisingly I have some mixed feelings about them. As I have stated above, there is a great deal worth celebrating in America and there is also a great deal worth changing. Certainly, I cannot celebrate July 4th without also mourning the short sighted and evil practices of the past that are not given a special day of mourning in which the whole country drops to its knees and prays for repentance on the past and begs for insight into the present and the future. A day for the slaughter of the Indians. A day for the the horror of the middle passage. July 4th represents many great things about humanities struggle to live together for the best of all but it also has a mythical quality that ignores that not all about our past is worthy of our praise. Lastly, if you happen to drive by my house on July 4th weekend you will find the Stars and Stripes hanging from the door post. Why? Because I am a thankful person. This does not mean I agree with everything that has happened to make America what it is nor that I agree with everything that is occuring now to make it what it is. However, there is much to celebrate and celebrate I will-just not pledge. 3/10/10 Panera Bread I wonder if I am listening the voice of a killer. I am sitting at Panera Bread in close proximity to others. It is hard to always ignore private conversations occurring at the table next to you. Two men are in an animated conversation about the christian faith, biblical truths, politinics, geology and people. One man is more vocal than the other and more clear in his positions. He began the conversation wondering how load the people in church were allowed to sing since the bible issnt clear what it means by a loud noise. The conversation quickly moved to inditing President Obama for not being a resident, not being a Christian, and for destroying the country. ”He speaks to the emotions,” the man said with bad grammer emotionally. The have talked about the recent earthquakes that have erupted in the world and how God is going to cast California into the sea with such force that Okalohama will be beach front. They talked about Tennessee and the number of faults we have. They talked about preaching the word. Just preach the word. The man does not think of himself as a killer but when hatred and prejudice is fueled by a God of Armegeddon then the heart is already so twisted by ignorance that death is but a few horrible historica possibilites away. I am heavily influenced right now by the documentary our Sunday School has watched, The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court, and by a book, as we forgive which shares biographical stories of genocide survivors in Rwanda. These resources, and others, have increasingly revealed to me that we our hearts are capable of incredible good and incredible evil and that we have to be very wary of the monster lurking inside of us. The killers in Rwanda did not know they had it in them and most of them are revolted by what they had become. This man, here in this modern resturant, doesn’t seem to have the eyes to see himself or the ears to hear himself. Every other sentance is an exclamation against someone else. I go off on them, he say. I get so sick of them, he rants. I, me personally, am afraid of him and for him. 1/28/10 Day after the State of the Union I didn’t watch. I admit it. Instead I Hulued Dead Like Me. One of my new passions. But truly I didn’t see any point and this morning as I listened to the reporting on the State of the Union address my reasons for not listening were confirmed as valid. Namely, the Democrats liked it while the Republicans didn’t like it and everyone else will just have to wait and see. However, I find myself slowly moving beyond these three positions to a fourth. The I am not really that interested anymore position or the position of Resistance. The book from the Progressive Christian Movement “Resistance” has helped me articulate emotions that have been fermenting inside my gut for some time. The government works the balancing act between supporting the status qou and reform. Doing so is dicy and difficult and self interested groups have a lot to win or lose in the process. Many of these groups are well intentioned and seek movement on important issues that I support. Many of them are not well intentioned. However, it is becoming more apparent to me that the modern political system we have is ill equipped to handle the modern problems we created. We cannot just wait to reform. We cannot just place our trust in our elected leaders to move the ship of state in the right direction. I think the ship is sinking and the servants in Washington are playing Monopoly and Risk on a boat going down. Now this sounds pretty apocalyptic. Maybe it is. I have long thought that we are part of a grand national expeirment-this US of A of ours- and if it is sinking it will take a long time to go down. It is easy to believe that the pumps in the lower decks are sufficient to stave off disaster for a time and the engineers in the laboratories will find marvelous technological ways to save us before they do. I hope so because I don’t see enough people waking up to the reality of the situtation soon enough to build enough Arks to get into. And even if they did I think we would run out of wood. Now I don’t want you to think this depresses me too much. I find myself conveniently adept at putting aside despair by the geologic reality that all species go extinct. (I was a geology major in college-go WOO!) I do, in fact, find myself empowered. Empowered to live a stronger life of resistance against the dominant cultural current of apocalypse. Not to survive. I will be as powerfully pulled in the currents direction as the poor but happy soul who doesn’t know any better like two leaves in a torrent. However, this isn’t about survival its about living. Real living. Gospel living. Relational living. The life that Jesus calls us to. This is a call to resists. Now I don’t mean strikes or sit ins but living practices that support and nourish an economy and a politics that reflects the call of Discipleship. For instance, spending more time with the people of the church that share common commitments and common concern for one another instead of spending time watching the latest rehash of a old news from last night. Spending as much of our money as we can on the local non industrial economy versus the international industrial one. Spending as much time with my family and conituning to learn to appreciate them as the gifts from God that they are as I can. These simple living practices aren’t going to change the current of the dominant culture but they are witnesses to the gospel and are thus, the Way of Life even if that Way is as doomed as the way of life that doesn’t care. 1/18/10 Martin Luther King Jr. Day I do not think I am alone in having some confusion about what my role in the celebration of legal equality won through the civil rights movement that our nation memoralizes on this national holiday actually is. Should i celebrate it with a party? Should I make a float and ride in it during the parade? Should I stand before the Lord and pray a prayer for forgiveness for our church then and today? I am certainly pleased that we remember the day but then again I am not from the south and I didn’t live through the chaos and pain of that movement. An older friend once told us that Martin Luther King Jr was one of the worst things that ever happened to the nation. I was too shocked to delve further into what she meant though I knew that she grew up in Selma. Whatever my safe Yankee opinion of King Jr was I knew enough to know that I was several steps removed from the eye of the hurricane that tore towns and churches in three. Three because, as Martin wrote in his Letter from Brighmanham Jail, there were those who didn’t support the movement, those who did and then everyone in between who wanted to keep things peaceful. Unfortunately, the majority of white Christians fall solidly in the middle peace over justice camp. This is an especially poignant reality for Disciples of Christ who pride themselves in being a unity church. Indeed, Alexander Campbell, I have recently read, chose to prioritize unity of the church over a solid Christ centered stand against slavery. We have a heritage as a church to want unity over anything else. This DNA can be witnessed in our lack luster culture of accountability in most of our DOC churches. We kind of tip toe around each other and our firmly held beliefs. Unfortunately, we will look back in hindsight twenty years from now and shake our heads at our failure the same way we should look back and shake our heads at our failure during the civil rights, woman’s rights, slavery and more. We will have an uneasy feeling about the future national holidays celebrating our higher national ideals because there are so many justice issues that we fail to stand up for in order not to break the unity of standing at the table toghether. Gay rights, economic rights, humane food systems, international debt relief, health care and more will all be movements that will be celebrated by our nation some day and I fear Disciples of the future will wonder where their church was during the struggle. And so I have an uneasy feeling about Martin Luther King Jr Day because I know through it both our past failures to stand up for God’s Justice and thru it I cannot escape our present failures to stand up for movements towards a more just society and world ongoing today. Not to mention the fact that the civil rights movement did a lot for equality for African Americans and is worth celebrating but is far from over. Racism, in a much more systemic and underground form, is still very much alive in America. King Jr day is thus a day of confession and repentance and committment to act. There is a desperate need in the world for the Church to figure out how to both stand up powerfully for justice because it is our job to insure that all people have a right to stand with us at the Table of our Lord. Unfortunately, this means otherwise great people, will be offended and perhaps even refuse to stand with us. But we should not allow ourselves to so easily relive the past in the name of a unity that muzzles the voice of justice. 1/1/10
Christmas Reflection
As I write this our family is preparing to go on the exciting adventure of purchasing a Christmas tree. I have fond memories of getting a tree with my parents and siblings when I was a child. Tree hunting was quite an affair. Winter in upstate New York suffered the extreme weather havoc of deep snows blowing off Lake Ontario. This Lake Effect was a blast for us kids as we piled on huge amounts of layered clothing, coats, boots, hats and knit mittens so we could trudge through the 2 feet deep snow to find and cut down a tree. The whole lot of us would load up in the Suburban and then later, as the family grew, in other vehicles as well for the hour long drive. At least one kid would be crying, someone would get sick, another would need to go potty and half of us would be bickering with the other half. It was wonderful. My parents took a novel approach to finding a tree. This was an important decision. We would search the woods-and I mean the woods. No tree farms for us. We would trudge through the woods looking for the perfect tree. Now, pine trees in forest don’t look so good down near their bottoms but we weren’t looking at the bottoms. We spent our time analyzing the peaks of the trees. Judging as best as we could from the forest floor which tree top twenty feet up would make the best tree for our living room. Finally, when the almighty decision was made dad would climb the tree-ten feet up and with his bow saw-(wow, that’s my dad!)- cut the top off to a chorus of timbers from his wet, cold, sniffling family. The top of the tree would be dragged back through the forest, lashed to the top of the tree and home we would go. Frozen feet and all. In a few minutes Emily and I will take the boys to a well manicured tree farm to walk the mowed rows and professionally trimmed trees planted, cultured and designed to sell. No wildness, no snow, no freezing toes. No sacrifice. The boys won’t know what they are missing but I hope I can teach them something of the wildness of the Christmas Spirit that is born into the world with the Christ child. Jesus’ ministry, death, resurrection are anything but tame. They are wild and revolutionary. They cannot be pruned and domesticated for our easy consumption. Invite this Spirit into you Christmas this season. You won’t forget it. Peace and Love.
11/30/09
A Simple Confession…
Anyone can join our church. On any Sunday, someone new to our fellowship or good friend, can walk forward during the invitation and merge with us as a Body of Christ.
The invitation at Northside is not a drawn out affair. We are not keeping score and if no one comes forward to be ’saved’ we do not feel that we have failed in our task of bringing the Presence of God to bear on our lives in judgment and comfort.
However, if someone does come forward we have a very simple question. ‘Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God?’
That is it.
We don’t ask anything else. We don’t ask if you believe the Bible is literal or not. We don’t ask if you believe Jesus was born of a virgin or not. We don’t ask if you believe in the Second Coming or not. We don’t ask any of these questions. We don’t ask if you have been divorced. We don’t ask if you have been to prison. We don’t ask if you are gay or straight, rich or poor, stingy or generous.
None of that matters.
What does matter is are you in need of Grace?
Are you in need of Mercy?
Are you aware that through Jesus you have received new life?
Do you believe that Jesus is the image of God on earth through the Spirit?
This seems like a very simple confession but the witness it makes is enormous. There is only one thing that matters. There is only one thing that makes us one. There is only one thing that merges us together as a Body.
That is the Love of God through Christ!
Is this Good News to you?
It is to me.
11/9/09 The Second Coming… I haven’t spent a great deal of time thinking about the Second Coming of Christ. I have always connected thish theological vision of the future with an incredible and seemingly inccurable judgmentalism and fascination with pain and suffering. However, after reading N.T. Wright’s book Surprised by Hope; Rethinking Heaven, the Ressurection, and the Mission of the Church I have been offered a truly beautiful and empowering view of the Orthodox understanding of this biblical reality. Part of my struggle was that the Second Coming, like other pretty fanatstical scriptural visions, such as the Ressurection, are pretty hard to ignore but also for one as solidly thankful for a modern mind well immersed in the modern science and reality to swallow. This engaging book helped me to understand a vision of the Second Coming in such a way that I can think of it as another beautiful expression of hope and mission. Basically my interpretation of Wright’s and through him I feel scriptures view of the second coming is one of Jesus, in person as the Human One-coming back to rule what has been given him from God. We are invited in this life through faith to acknowledge him as Lord, and as such, be equipped with the New Heart of the New Covenant. This, in effect, means that we are vessels or moments of New Creation in the Old Creation passing away. As New Creations we are to be about the business Jesus was about. This is our Way because it was His Way. To heal, to feed, to right and restore so that when he comes back as Lord our work will be a foundation for the New Creation. The Second Coming is not about Judgment but about restoration-the reunion of Heaven and Earth. The return of the Garden where in the words of Rev 21 God will dwell with Mortals. It is definitely not about escape from this world but about returning as creatures to our original intent-that of stewards with Jesus as our chief steward. All this is to say that as moments of New Creation in the Old World passing away we must be about the work of New Creation. We need to get busy.
