Peace-a-palooza...

A dear friend from our college days surprised us with a visit for worship yesterday morning while on his way through our small town. It was great to see him and to catch even the few brief minutes we had for conversation. At the end of the day there were, of course, the requisite reflections on his visit on Facebook…including a comment from our friend about the “Sharing of the Peace-a-palooza” which is a part of our practice.

Just to explain: the sharing of the peace of Christ takes a few minutes in this place. I know that some of the liturgical purists would find it overdone (while the pathologically introverted almost certainly find it horrifying), but the folks here seem to enjoy leaving their pews and warmly greeting one another as sisters and brothers renewed by the grace of the Savior. It is noisy and a bit chaotic, and visitors are certainly not ignored in the process. Hence, our dear friend’s comment.

I’ve wondered at times (liturgy nerd that I am) if we haven’t gotten a bit out of hand. But the pastor in me is loathe to rein it in. There are so few places in this world where folks of all stripes and means are genuinely welcome or where they might be joined in true community. The Church, it occurs to me, must always be that place…even if it’s a bit messier than we would like. There’s a missional aspect to this, too. Our identity as Christ’s disciples is undergirded to great degree by that “mutual conversation and consolation of the saints” (thanks, Brother Martin) which affirms that, as we are Christ’s, we are also members one of another (and thanks, St. Paul). From simple things like sharing the peace with a hug, a handshake and a good word comes the strength to bear God’s grace outside the walls of the congregation’s building…confident that we do not stand alone, but are borne up by the rest of the baptized in witness to the world which God seems determined to reconcile.

Self-justification for our existing practice? Maybe. But I’m willing to take that risk if the peace-a-palooza in here means a more faithful and engaged presence “out there.”

Thankful...

If you are on Facebook (and really…who isn’t on Facebook these days), you’ve probably been reading the status updates of your friends and acquaintances as they post each day during November that one thing, event or person for which they are thankful. Perhaps you’ve been participating in this ritual yourself. Good for you.

I am not making these daily posts. For some reason, I just can’t bring myself to be all that reflective alongside the latest Farmville updates, rude comics, and music videos. But I am a thankful person. Really I am.

Mostly.

Okay…mostly not thankful enough.

Just one example: The good folks here at Grace have been updating the 1970’s-era kitchen in the parsonage. Everything was torn back to the bare walls and rebuilt…new wiring and lighting, mostly new appliances, new cupboards and counters and floors…everything. The very skilled folks of this place have been doing the work themselves on nights and weekends, and they’ve been very particular about doing it well. It’s going to be wonderful. But it has been going on for more than 14 weeks, which is long enough to make one weary of not having a kitchen. Consequently, my attitude toward the project hasn’t been the most thankful or charitable…especially for the last month or so.

On the other hand: I just found out that our friend Val gets to move back home tomorrow. She was flooded out of her North Dakota parsonage back on May 23, and has been “making do” ever since. Needless to say, she’s pretty excited and thankful to be back in her own place.

The difference between these two scenarios helps me understand why thanksgiving…real thanksgiving…is so darned hard: in my sinfulness, I find it difficult to get out of my own way long enough to understand how truly blessed I am. Luther (after Augustine) identifies this as living in se curvatus, i.e. turned in on oneself, and it’s the headline symptom for the sinful life. I seem to be infected.

The cure for this infection, of course, has already been delivered. It is a gracious Savior whose redeeming work among us begins by unfolding our self-centered lives so that we might grasp both our own deep need and the emergent beauty of a cosmos being set right by unmerited and unrelenting grace. This wider and more genuine perspective on life cannot help but yield awe and thanksgiving.

Truth is: most of the time I don’t realize how good I have it. (I’m convinced, by the way, that I’m not alone in this flaw.) So thanks be to God for a glimpse of reality. And thanks be to God for Val’s homecoming. And thanks be to God for a new kitchen, and committed craftsmen, and the willingness to take the time to do things well. And thanks be to God for the opportunity to be shaped not by some anxiety about what’s missing in our lives, but by the wonder of what we have already been given.

You read it here; I won’t be posting it on Facebook.

We are one...

This past weekend, Ebenezer Lutheran Church…a sister ELCA congregation in San Francisco…held their 5^th annual Faith and Feminism conference. Certainly, the church catholic has not always heard or valued the voices of women. So opening the church to the witness and experience of women seems like a reasonable, indeed necessary, move.

Where things get dicey, however, is when the local high priestess for the pagan goddess Isis is invited to conduct a workshop, or when the treasured prayers of the church, e.g. the Lord’s Prayer, gets re-written, or when the liturgy no longer leads worshipers before the Holy Trinity but invites them into relationship with the divine feminine or Christ-Sophia. 

Hmmm.

I know. These folks are 2000 miles away from me. What should I care? But I do care. For one thing, we ostensibly share the same theological commitments as congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. We are partners in the mission work of this denomination…not simply isolated local congregations. I take seriously that partnership. But I wonder how or if that partnership can continue where syncretism (not just bad local theology) seems to be the order of the day.

One of the great temptations that has come out of the ELCA’s recent actions concerning sexuality and ministry has been for local congregations to withdraw into themselves…not leaving the denomination, but ignoring the changes in policy, reducing or eliminating their financial support, and satisfying themselves with the notion that “they can’t tell us what to do” or “it won’t happen here.” I think I understand how this idea becomes plausible.

But it is, ultimately, misguided. The church is not a stand-alone operation. Like it or not, we are connected to one another in the sharing of Christ’s mission in the world. Our communities likely do not need just another idiosyncratic local service club. They need the grand story of the Gospel lived out by the whole Church for the sake of the world God loves so deeply.

Which means…rather than retreating into ourselves as though we can ignore the issues which challenge us, this is a time for the Church to get serious about the Good News which is Christ’s gift and challenge to us. We must ask hard questions about rival theologies and dubious spiritual practices. We must take loving responsibility for one another so that we might speak the one Word, even though it be through many voices.

Inside Out...

It’s annoying when it happens to socks and t-shirts.  You pull them out of the dryer and go to put them on, only to find out that all the tossing and tumbling has turned them inside out.  Not a good way to start the day. Grrr.

But sometimes, turning things inside out is helpful. The image that comes to mind is that of a sack or storage bag that needs to be cleaned. We have one of these in our pantry that we use for storing onions. About the only way to clean it is to turn it inside out so that all the dirt and onion skins that have accumulated on the inside can be removed. And when that’s done, it’s a good as new...ready for the next batch of onions.

I wonder: Is it possible that churches need to be turned inside out occasionally, too. Here’s what I’m getting at.

For a long time, we in the church have been convinced that our number one job was to get more people into the church. It makes sense in a way. If this is where God is celebrated, wouldn’t we want more folks to be a part of that celebration?

The problem is that, over the past 1700 years or so, this focus on attracting people to the church has nearly blotted out the fact that our real number one job is to be the body of Christ in the world, i.e. to be Christ...to carry on the mission of Christ. Rather than getting people to join the church, our job is (in fact) to be Christ’s servant church. And that means turning things inside out...not focusing so much on getting folks in the door as we focus on getting the church out into the world, doing what Christ calls us to do: healing, praying, teaching, loving, giving of ourselves so that others may come to Christ and live.

Inside-out church. Hmm. There’s an idea that has some potential. Start with this question: how are you Christ to others in your daily life? Where has God put you to be his missionary? With whom are you sharing the Good News?

I think we need to talk about this some more. Stay tuned.   

Trust in...

Just finished reading an article (here) detailing the back-and-forth, point-and-blame dance currently underway in Washington concerning the federal budget. The only two things I learned from reading this article are 1) it's politics as usual in D.C., and 2) the dosage on my blood pressure medicine may need to be raised. In the interest of full disclosure: I'm not a one-issue whiner. I have a similar reaction to arguments about SB5, public school funding in Ohio, and the on-going conversation about sexuality and ministry policy in my denomination (the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America).

In times like these, I turn to Jeremiah (not the Bible's happiest camper, BTW)...not because he is a cynic, but because he tells the truth: "Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength ... Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord." (Jeremiah 17:5-9 is the place to read.)

My problem? (OK) One of my problems? I expect that we human beings are going to be able to resolve the problems and issues we've made between us. I expect that we'll behave with decency, civility and charity in the process. Then I get really disappointed when it turns out that we won't and seemingly can't. And then I get depressed when it turns out that (honesty is the best policy here) I'm no better at this than anyone else.

Guess I'd better stick to Jeremiah's advice and trust in the Lord...indeed, to trust in what God has already done in Christ Jesus. Salvation sure isn't happening on my watch. Only a death and a resurrection can do what needs done...unbinding us from the sub-human desire to trust something less than God for the deliverance we so desperately need.

We've been given a new life, folks...a second chance. Rather than blow it on the same old sins, let's take this opportunity to submit our world and ourselves in joyful obedience to the One who loves nothing more than creating gardens and raising the dead...a whole world after Jeremiah's (God's) vision: deeply rooted, leafy green and full of fruit.

Who We Are...

One of the first things we do in the class preparing for Holy Communion is to figure out who we are. It's a simple exercise. I ask the children to write down as many of their "identities" as they can imagine: son or daughter, niece or nephew, student, friend, 4-H member, singer, grandchild, etc. The list is usually pretty long. But then we add one more...if it's not already there: Child of God. And we celebrate...giving thanks to the God who names us, claims us, loves us and feeds us.

We seem to have spent a lot of time during these days after Epiphany talking about identity. Primarily, it's been about Jesus' identity...Lamb of God, Son of God, Rabbi, Messiah, Savior, Healer, the One who bestows blessing. A part of what we learn from this is God's identity, too, as we realize that it is in and through Jesus, the God made visible, we come to know and love the heavenly Father whom we cannot see.

But more: we are given insights into our own identity in this process. We are the Father's beloved children, not fearful slaves of an angry judge. We are formed as body of Christ, not just individual believers. We are the means by which God's mission continues to unfold in the world...and not merely consumers of religious stuff like sermons, anthems, and a bit of bread and wine on Sunday morning when we feel like it.

Hmm. It turns out that who we are is pretty important. Taking seriously who we are is the difference between being Church and merely going to church. Our identity as children/body/mission means that the Spirit is at work, lending perspective on the world and our place in it, and granting us the privilege of sharing in God's own holy prejudice towards reconciliation and new life.

Of course it's more complicated than this, but...if there is a single, primary reason why the Church finds itself increasingly irrelevant and marginalized in today's culture, I'm convinced it's largely because we've forgotten who we are. Whenever we settle for being the moral police force or the local ritual store or just another club with fine ethics but an inability to live up to them, we sell ourselves short.

Sisters and brothers, we are the body of Christ, the beloved of God who get to be (by grace, to be sure) the redemptive and transformative love of God in, of and for the world. And lest that sound too grand, remember: this is a love that works itself out not only in big, flashy projects, but in every mundane and countless word and deed: from forgiveness given and received between old enemies to the kiss on your grandchild's forehead...from tears shared with a grieving friend to the feeding of a hungry neighbor.

This is who we are: Body. Mission. Children. Those who, though dead, have been raised to live in freedom and love. May we never forget it.

Going Down?

There was an article in a recent issue of Christian Century magazine that tracked attendance patterns among four large mainline Christian denominations, including the ELCA. (Check out the link on our Facebook page.) As you might guess, the news isn’t good. Since 2001, fewer folks are attending worship...and those who are attending are doing so less frequently. The result is that many congregations...and the denominations of which they are a part...are slowly withering away.

The reasons for this (or at least the opinions as to the reasons for this) are legion and often contradictory: changing social habits, conflicted and drab congregations, a faithless retreat from traditional values and teachings, a stubborn clinging to traditional values and teachings, folks who just attend out of habit, not enough discipline among young people, kids’ sports on Sundays, etc., etc. There’s probably at least a grain of truth in most of these (and the many others unmentioned here). But simply finding something to blame...while it might make us feel good for a moment...doesn’t move us forward.

Grace, of course, is not immune to these challenges...even though we’ve seen modest growth in worship attendance and excellent financial support for our ministries. We should not take for granted that this will last forever. So how can we buck the national trend? Here are a couple thoughts:

First: let’s be honest about the fact that being Christian in American society is not automatic or inevitable. We are a pluralistic culture with a lot of options by which folks can work out their spirituality, and many of those options are not Christian. The person who visits on Sunday morning may not really be looking for church. They may be looking for help or taking the first step in a long search for hope and meaning. How, then, shall we welcome them?

Second: we must remember that the church is not a place; it is a people. Yes, I know that we’ve already heard that (and probably could sing a Bible school song or two about it). But our behaviors and language betray us. We talk about where we go to church, rather than who we are as church. This is not just word play; it’s a huge difference in attitude. For example: I go to Meijer to buy groceries, but sometimes I go to Miller’s. Places (while they may be important) are not as powerful as our identity as a people. Who I am...my identity as a brother in Christ with all of you...is a more powerful, attractive and faithful concept than location. We don’t just go to “the barn church on 51;” we are the barn church on 51.

And finally (for now): since identity is so important, than so too are the relationships we build and the purpose which binds us together. It’s a fact: We are the body of Christ in this place, joined to each other in love and in the greater purpose of living God’s good news for the sake of our neighbors and our world. That’s good news. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t want the gratification of being part of something greater than himself. Human beings are built for purpose and relationship. So how perfect is it that purpose and relationship are precisely what the church is all about? Do you suppose God knew that as He shaped the church?

Well...I’m out of space, and have just scratched the surface. But let’s make this a topic of conversation: How can we more faithfully be the purposeful, relational, and thus attractive community God has called and made us to be? As we begin to answer this question, I’m sure we’ll discover that the church is not “going down.” Instead, we are being called to a continuing reformation...one that enables us to speak the Gospel ever more clearly to the world around us. That sounds pretty exciting.

This is fun...

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MTD: Is It Good Enough for Me?

“MTD” is short-hand for “moral therapeutic deism.” It’s the term adopted by Kenda Creasy Dean, a professor at Princeton and author of the book Almost Christian. She argues that more and more young people in Christian churches are embracing a watered-down, not really Christian faith that doesn’t reject basic Christian beliefs, but doesn’t encourage them either. Instead MTD affirms that “God” created the world and is available to help you feel better when you’re down...but otherwise stays out of the way. God wants us to be nice and happy. The God of MTD says that good people go to heaven. That’s about all there is to it. And while these might be common assumptions about Christianity, they certainly aren’t the rich historic claims of the faith passed down through the ages.

So why are kids embracing this wimpy version of the faith? Maybe it’s because the Church doesn’t take their faith development seriously enough.

Consider: How often do the adults in charge bend over backwards to get the kids to tutors, coaches, practices, and games to make sure that they learn or even excel in everything from algebra to dance to hockey? Yet the name of the game for religion is usually just to “expose” kids to faith...and hope they soak something up. Far from the radical commitments of the first disciples, we often assume that the kids are doing OK if they make a few good friends at youth group, have fun at camp, learn how to be nice, and avoid drugs and premarital sex.

So...what do we do about this? I don’t think we know for sure. Some researchers are seeing a new passion among young people who want a faith that matters in a world that seems so off balance. Others worry about a decline in Christianity in this country that will bring faith practices here to the same low levels seen in Europe for decades. While I’m glad to hear about that new passion, I’m concerned that failing faith is the more likely outcome. Some action seems appropriate.

And a place to start might be with an examination of our own faith as adults. Do we understand for ourselves why the Christian faith makes any real difference in our lives or in the world? We could probably define concepts like “nice” and “good”...but what about “grace” or “discipleship”? Add to this the fact that more and more of us adults grew up outside the Church or on the same watered-down version of the faith. Plus, those who are supposed to be in charge of spiritual formation (clergy-types like me and lay leaders, too), have not always done a very good job of teaching and modeling the faith either.

So...now what?

Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I truly believe that, at least in our own little corner of the world, we and the Holy Spirit can make a difference. So here’s a deal. I promise that you will hear the Good News of Jesus Christ and that you will have the opportunity to learn and grow in the faith every time you come here on Sunday morning (and Wednesday evening, for that matter). Grace will (continue to) be a place where the faith is clearly and enthusiastically taught and lived for adults and youth and children alike.

For your part: you need to be here...ready to worship and learn and grow...ready to make our shared faith a living priority. I have no doubt that, in so doing, our kids will grow stronger right along with us.

The assumption here, of course, is that the faith of our young people is important to us. I’m going to make that assumption because I have seen in you (talking to the folks at Grace here) an innate desire to give your children the very best you can. And what could be better than a sturdy, working faith in the God who calls and sends each new generation into the world with the Gospel. We can do better; MTD is not good enough. This is an opportunity, brothers and sisters. Let’s seize it.

(Thanks to Jay McDivitt, a pastor at Grace Lutheran Church in Thiensville, WI, for the meat of this article.)

Branded...

We had an interesting conversation at the Suds & Salvation back on June 29…exploring how Christianity “competes” in a world full of all kinds of brands that make all kinds of promises about how to improve (or save) your life.

We live in a branded society. No big surprise there. Over the past 50 years, corporations (both for-profit and non-profit) have shifted their strategic efforts as much or more to the attention of brand identities as to improvements in the actual products and services they sell or provide. In a very real sense, the brand has become the product; we purchase the brand as much as the branded object. Product performance used to be enough; now it’s personality that counts. The brand is the single most important asset of any company, and its management is a primary concern.

By focusing on branding, companies hope to make their logos into a lifestyle, an image, an identity, or a set of values. Brands should, at their best, emote a distinct persona which will be taken on with zeal by consumers. When it works at its best, a brand will colonize the mental space inside each of us. They are meant to win share of mind for a particular proposition, thus influencing the choices we make about our identity. So it is: our relationship to the brands we buy has an influence on who we are as persons.

Christians recognize, however, that there is another brand at work in the world. This brand is one you cannot purchase at any price. It comes to us entirely as a gift. It is traced upon us in anointing oils at Holy Baptism or in times of illness and need. It is retraced in ashes at the beginning of Lent, and marked again on us every Sunday…perhaps even every morning when we rise. This brand…the mark of the cross…comes only as a gift from a loving God. And, like the secular brands that are as omnipresent for us as the air we breathe, it is about a way of life that identifies us…in this case, with the very life of God in Christ Jesus.

Dear sisters and brothers, we are called to think about what we purchase, what we give space to in our lives. So it's reasonable to ask: where and how is the Christ brand visible upon, within and through us?