identity – Salvaged Faith

Nehemiah: Renewing Our Commitment

Posted on February 5, 2023Leave a comment

Text: Nehemiah 8:5-10; 9:1-3, 38; 10:28-29

Last week, we talked about some of the opposition that the builders and Nehemiah faced while building the wall.

He had to deal with scandal and oppression perpetrated by his own officials…

but he also had to create plans to protect the people from enemies who wanted to attack and destroy their work.

And then suddenly, the work was complete.

It took just fifty-two days to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem.

FIFTY-TWO DAYS!

My drive home takes me down 63rd and they have been working to rebuild the bridges on Highway 28 over the Raccoon River since last summer and are only halfway done.

But these everyday folks rebuilt the walls of the entire city in fifty-two days.

So… what happened next?

Did they throw a party?

No. Nehemiah counts up the people.

He takes a census of all of the Israelites and counts up 42,360 people, an additional 7,337 slaves, 345 singers, 736 horses, 245 mules, 435 camels, and 6,720 donkeys.

And they take up an offering.

You know, like you do.

And then do they throw a party?

Nope.

Because all along this has not been a story about rebuilding a wall.

It has been a story about rebuilding a people.

Rebuilding a community that was centered on God.

As we talked about in the first week of this series, in order to get to the good stuff and address their needs related to belonging and identity, they first had to make sure that they cared for safety and security needs.

But once the walls were built and the gates restored and the officials were brought back in line from oppressive practices… well, the people could breathe.

And they could begin to refocus on their relationship with God.

In fact, rather than Nehemiah initiating the next steps, he writes that the people gathered together and asked the scholar Ezra to bring out the Law of Moses.

Ezra also had a calling… to rebuild the faith of the people, and his story can be found in the first half of the Ezra-Nehemiah saga.

As a priest, he understood that a right relationship with God was the only true source for security for the people.

And he understood that God’s law was the foundation for that “right relationship.”

The people are ready to listen.

So Ezra pulls out the scroll of the Law of Moses.

Many scholars think that this was likely what we know today as the Book of Deuteronomy, or “Second Law.”

And from early in the morning until noon, he reads aloud from the scroll to the people.

But friends… here is just how far away from the faith and their heritage the people were…

Ezra read the words, presumably in Hebrew… but the Levites, the priests, had to translate.

These, after all, were people who had grown up and spent their whole lives in Babylon and Persia.

Or, they were the everyday folks who had been left behind and lived under oppression and they didn’t have priests and schools and institutions in place to continue their traditions.

They were all strangers to their own culture and they didn’t understand their own language

And when they understood what the laws of Moses were asking of them, they wept.

Out of shame.

Out of guilt.

Out of frustration.

This did not feel like a joyful discovery… but rather it only highlighted in their hearts how far away they were from God and who they had been called to be.

At one of our meetings with Global Ministries, we spent some time listening to the stories of Native American United Methodists.

I can’t help but think of how the United States brutally removed indigenous people from their lands, when I think about the time of exile in Babylon for the people of Judah.

And in so many instances, our federal government and the religious partners who helped manage schools, focused on assimilation and removal of native culture, rather than allowing their traditions to flourish.

The same happened to Africans who were captured, sent halfway across the world, and forced into slavery.

As the General Board of Global Ministry, we watched together, “More than a Word,” which explores the use of Native American mascots.

What struck me among the stories were the voices of younger people who grew up either on reservations or even in more traditional white culture, but who were rediscovering their cultural identity.

Their identity had been forgotten. Or even worse, it had been described to them as shameful, something that had to be destroyed.

And it was hard for some to find a safe space to explore what that identity and history meant in their lives.

So part of their weeping was about a loss of that identity.

But the other part of their grief came from knowing just how far they had been from keeping God’s laws.

Suddenly, the rules were laid out for them plain as day, and they didn’t know how they could possibly ever make up for what they had left undone.

But Ezra and Nehemiah don’t see this as a moment to pile on shame.

They urge the people to dry their tears, to end their lament, to let go of their guilt and instead to gather in their homes and feast and give thanks.

Because this is a fresh start!

As one of my favorite hymns reminds us:

This is a day of new beginnings,

Time to remember and move on,

Time to believe what love is bringing,

Laying to rest the pain that’s gone.

This is their chance to let go of the past and put into practice the word of God that they have rediscovered.

What has come before this moment is in the past.

This moment they get a clean slate to start afresh and rededicate themselves to God.

As they continue to hear God’s word read, they rediscover rituals and traditions.

One of these is Festival of Booths that takes place in the seventh month… and lo and behold, they are in the seventh month!

So they follow all of the instructions and for the first time in generations, they honor this week-long holiday.

They also hear once again words that shape their identity as a people.

They remember how they were called together out of slavery in Egypt to be a people, set apart and holy.

That meant things like following a certain diet, refraining from intermarriage, and being dedicated to the Sabbath…

None of which were things that they had been practicing.

So, later that month, they join for a fast of repentance and recommitment.

They rededicate themselves to the law, trusting in the God who has been steadfast and merciful.

All of the officials, priests, and officers, singers, temple staff, gatekeepers and all of the people who were old enough to understand joined together in a binding oath to follow what they read about in Deuteronomy.

They recommitted themselves to the law.

Their focus was on crossing every t and dotting every i.

Keeping the Sabbath.

Refraining from intermarriage.

Practicing Jubilee.

Offering to support the temple.

Dedicating their first fruits.

Bringing in the tithe.

As we think about what it means to rebuild our community, a huge part of what we need to do is remember who we are.

A key difference between us and the people of Judah at this time is that we have a different frame of reference and a different calling.

We are not called to be a people, set apart and holy, isolated, focused on following every letter of the law.

God knows that we will fail if we try… because the people of God failed over and over again.

Last year, we joined together in UMC 101 and we explored together some of OUR foundational beliefs and practices.

We remembered things like:

Our focus on grace and faith put into practice.

The call to reach out and share the love of God with all people.

A charge that makes room for difference and invites us to use our brains and celebrates diversity.

All grounded and centered in the core of Christian tradition… praising the God of all creation who became flesh and lived and died and rose again so that we might truly know life.

In Jesus Christ we have been redeemed and made right… not because we followed the law, but by his grace, and God continues to empower us by the Holy Spirit.

And we remembered that our congregation exists for a purpose.. to help people accept and confess Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and to live their daily lives in light of their relationship with God.

This is who we are.

A people who love God and accept the grace God offers… and then live out that love and grace in our daily lives.

We are called to be a witness… a light and a leaven in society, a reconciler in a world that is divided, to go into places of pain and show Christ’s hope. (Book of Discipline ¶220)

In just a few minutes, we will be invited to the table.

Just like the people of Judah embraced their traditions and practices, this is a practice that is at the core of our being.

This is a place where we are empowered to start again.

This is a place where we recommit ourselves to God and one another.

This is the place where we find God’s strength and grace for the new beginning that awaits us.

Friends, it doesn’t matter what has come before.

There is no reason to weep or grieve or feel shame for what has been done in the past.

Because here we receive the grace of God that is our new beginning.

So may we, too, come and recommit our hearts to God on this day.

Follow the Star: Identity

Posted on January 10, 2021Leave a comment

Text: Mark 1:4-11

Last week, we invited you to follow the star of the Magi…
Not the one in the sky, but the one in the manger.
The one who drew them over mountains and deserts and seas.

I love how the Message translation makes clear that the object we are seeking and following is none other than Jesus.
“The star in this drama,” John the Baptist says, “will change your life.”

John called people to the river to confess and repent.
To wash away their old life and make a commitment to a new one.
It was a simple invitation and people were drawn by this call.
They were eager to embrace this tangible, physical, vigorous act of letting themselves be washed clean.
As the cold water drifted by them, the current took their sins away.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if it was that easy?
Just hop in the river and everything is better?

But even John the Baptizer knew this wasn’t the end of the story.
It wasn’t enough.
You couldn’t just say “I’m sorry.”
You actually had to start living differently and there was only one person who had the power to change people from the inside-out.
So he started preparing people for the true star of this show, the mighty and powerful one who would wash people not with water, but with the very Spirit of God.
And then, Jesus appeared.
He showed up at that very same river and spot and he was baptized, too.

Mark tells us that Jesus saw the heavens open and the Holy Spirit come down.
Like a dove diving from the heavens it rested upon him.
And then there was a voice.
“You are my son.
You are chosen and marked by my love.
You are the pride of my life.“

If last week, the star word we focused on was epiphany, this week it is identity.
And clearly, we discover the identity of Jesus in this passage.
God makes it pretty clear who this guy standing in the water is.
God’s Son.
Beloved.
Delightful.

But if this was the identity of Jesus Christ, why did he need to be baptized?
Why did he enter the water in the first place?
Certainly not because he needed to repent or because he was unclean.
No… Jesus entered the water for us.
He stepped into the water so that you could enter the water.
So that you could let go of your sins.
So that we might be made sons and daughters and children of God.
So that the Holy Spirit might descend and flow into our lives.
As the Orthodox baptismal liturgy asserts: “He emerges from the waters and uplifts the world with Him.”

You see, baptism began as a simple ritual washing, but it was transformed by Christ in this holy and sacred moment into a mark that is stamped on your soul and can never go away.
“You are mine,” God says.
“You are beloved,” God says.
“Don’t you ever forget how proud I am of you.”
This is who you are now.
This is your very identity.
Chosen and beloved of God.

Martin Luther once said that every time we wash our hands or our face we should remember our baptism.
Every time we should remember that we are a child of God.
In fact, he was known to often make the sign of a cross on his forehead and whisper softly to himself, “I am baptized.”

That might be easy to remember on the days when the sun is shining and all is right with the world, but it is something we need to remember on the tough days as well.
And, well, we’ve known some tough days lately.
Wednesday, as I was working on writing and praying over the star words that we mailed out this week I got a notification from a colleague that said, “turn on your television.”
I sat at my desk shaking, stunned by the images unfolding on the screen.
T-shirts celebrating the holocaust, the confederate flag paraded through the halls of congress, the large cross being erected on the lawn.
And so many were quick to say: “this is not who we are.”

Except, it is.
This world is broken, and bleeding, and bruised…
As my colleague Diane Kenaston wrote, “This is exactly who we are. We’re shaped by white supremacy, lust for power, violence, scapegoating, fear, and individualism. We’re shaped by sin. And it’s for that reason that we need the transforming love of God… This is who we are, but this is not who we have to be.”

We are called to claim an identity that calls us to love and serve and heal and forgive.
“You are mine,” God says. “You are beloved…. Don’t forget it.”
In the act of baptism in our tradition, it is not simply that God’s Spirit washes over us.
God gives us the power to actually be different.
And so with God’s help, we take vows.
We make promises to reject spiritual evil and the forces of this world.
We promise to resist injustice and oppression.
We promise to stand with God not political leaders… of either party.
We promise to trust in God’s grace.
And all of that becomes part of our identity, too.

Sometimes we are called to do that in small ways. Nadia Bolz-Weber writes:
“The first move of the devil is always the same. Attack your identity as the beloved with whom God is well pleased… nowhere are we more prone to encroaching darkness than when we are stepping into the light. If you have ever experienced sudden discouragement in the midst of healthy decisions, or if there is a toxic thought that will always send you spiraling down, or if there is a particular temptation that is your weakness, then I make the following suggestion: take a note from Martin Luther’s playbook and defiantly shout back at this darkness “I am Baptized”…”
She goes on to recount how when faced with his own doubt and discouragement Luther was known to throw ink pots or other small items in whatever direction he felt a sense of spiritual malevolence… he could sometimes be heard throughout the castle shouting “I AM BAPTIZED!”

I have to admit that this sermon was not only complete, but had already been printed and mailed out to about fifty households when I turned on the news on Wednesday afternoon.
And as I sat there at my desk I found myself whispering to myself… I am baptized… I am baptized…
But I also wondered how many of the people in that crowd had been baptized, too.
I wondered about how that moment might have been different if their pastor had told them that celebrating the holocaust was evil.
Or if their Sunday School teacher had commented on their facebook post and challenged their white supremacy.
Or if they had heard a sermon that made it clear our allegiance is to God and not the leaders of this world.
Or maybe if there had been someone in their life besides the leader of our country who told them… You are loved. You are special.
And then I wondered whether I had actually done… or if I have failed to do those things.
Where have I been complicit in this moment.

The words of my dear friend and colleague, Rev. Diane Kenaston keep ringing through my head.
“This is who we are, but this is not who we have to be.”
And as we come to these waters, we remember the identity that God calls us to embody.
And God gives us the strength to face the world in all of its reality.
Good and bad.
Tragedy and pain.
Joy and celebration.
And the Holy Spirit helps us to say yes to the things that bring life and no to the things that bring death.
But we cannot do it without our baptisms.
We cannot do it if we forget that the Spirit has our back.
“You are mine,” God says. “Chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.”
In the midst of everything that is wrong, God pours sanctifying grace into our lives so that we can be different.
So that we can remember that we belong to God and that others belong to God, too.
So when violence breaks out we can stand for peace with justice and accountability.
When pain is felt, we can listen to the hurt and offer comfort without being overwhelmed.
When evil rears its ugly head, we can stand up, and let God shine through us.
And when we have failed, God forgives and renews and gives us the grace to try again.
Thanks be to God. Amen.

A Way Forward? Fixed And Free

Posted on August 12, 20182 Comments

The United Methodist Church is at a crossroads.

On the one hand, we do incredible work together because of our connection across the globe. Missionaries go from everywhere to everywhere. We are present amid disaster and crisis providing relief. New faith communities have been formed in West Des Moines, Camaroon, and Russia. And these things happen because we pool our resources to do the most good.

On the other hand, we are a diverse, expansive, global denomination working in many different contexts from many different backgrounds. Within that diversity is blessing and also conflict – including conflict about the role of LGBTQ+ persons in the life of the church – particularly whether they can be married in the church or ordained/consecrated by the church.

Next week, we’ll turn our attention to scripture and dive deeper into how they relate to what it means to be Lesbian, Gay, or Queer today.

But for today, we wanted to start with the big picture of how we got to this place as a denomination. Behind any particular verse is the tension between flexibility and permanence.

What is written in stone?

What is subject to change in time and context?

How do we know the difference?

In February, our denomination will hold a special session of General Conference and how we answer these questions will determine our identity for the future.

How did we get here?

As people of faith, we are heirs of both the tabernacle and the temple.

That is the premise that the pastors of Lovers Lane United Methodist Church shared with their congregation when they addressed our current dilemma at the beginning of this year. (https://soundcloud.com/llumc/sets/fixed-and-free)

As we heard in our scriptures for the day (Exodus 25:1-9 and 1 Kings 6:11-13), as the context and the people of the Bible changed, God had different ways that the people could come to know and worship God.

In the midst of the wilderness, the people had no home. They were always on the move, never setting down roots, everything was always changing and uncertain.

And so God sends them instructions to build a tent – a tabernacle – a movable place of worship that would go with them wherever they were.

Every person within the community was called upon to contribute something – richly colored yarns, gold, silver, wood, leather, precious stones – all of them used to create a moveable place for God to dwell among them on the journey. Wherever they traveled – God was with them. (Exodus 25:1-9)

Generations later, the people stopped moving. They had established themselves in the land and they wanted permanence. They wanted a king like the nations around them. And they wanted to build God a temple.

King David himself looked around at the palace he was living in while the Ark of the Covenant was still residing within the tabernacle. But it wasn’t until his son, Solomon, was established on the throne, that the temple in Jerusalem was constructed.

This temple, this permanent dwelling place for God, was important for the people in the time of the Kingdoms. No longer did the people all travel together with God in their midst. Now they were settled in far off places. The temple represented something stable and unchanging, the home base to which they could return. God now dwelt somewhere a part from the vast majority of the people – but if you followed the rules and went to the temple, you could be with God. (1 Kings 6:11-13)

That tension between what is fixed and free, an institution and a movement, is at the core of our struggle and our identity.

Are we focused on the God of the tabernacle – who hears the cries of the oppressed and marginalized and who makes a home among the people wherever they might be?

Or are we focused on the God of the temple – who has made a covenant and established laws and who calls us to repent and return home so we might experience life abundant?

It is both… a tension we must hold… but sometimes it becomes a tug of war that threatens to tear apart the church.

Even when we focus on the Word – both the one who walked among us and the living word we discover in this text – we see this tension.

As the gospel of John reminds us, “In the beginning was the Word… the Word became flesh and made his home among us.” (John 1: 1, 14) The roots of this passage are that the Word tabernacled among us.

But Jesus also said that upon the rock of Peter, he would build his church. Solid, foundational, able to withstand time and changing winds. (Matthew 16:18)

Too often, what we find reflected within the words of scripture are our own predispositions towards temple or tabernacle.

And, we must be aware that there is also a shadow side to either of these inclinations. If we lean too heavily upon viewing God through the lens of the tabernacle, we might be tempted to believe that wherever we are, whatever we believe, must be okay because God is right there with us. On the other hand, if we lean too heavily upon viewing God through the lens of the temple, we might be tempted to believe that faith means being rigid, legalistic, unmoveable. The tabernacle needs to be balanced with accountability. The temple needs to be balanced with grace.

There is an awful lot of history between the time of Christ and our denominational roots in the 18^th century. The church spread and conquered and fractured and reformed. The bible itself was put in the hands of everyday people. The Holy Spirit moved, and institutions grew.

One of our beginning points lies with John Wesley, a priest in the Church of England. The institutional church around him was very removed from the people of the day. And so, he felt a call to leave the cathedral and John Wesley went out into the fields, where the people were.

He preached in homes, and from the top of tombstones in the graveyard, and his brother, Charles, took old drinking songs and turned them into hymns. They gathered people into small groups for accountability and care and formation, but always encouraged them to remain connected to the established church.

Now, something that is important here is that Wesley never wanted to start a new church – he simply wanted to reform his church and help the people reconnect and experience the power of God in their lives. From England to Scotland to the American colonies – wherever the church was, small groups of Methodists were growing.

If you ever have trouble placing our history as a church, remember this – the Methodist movement grew up alongside the American Revolution. And when England lost and the Church of England left the colonies – all of those in the Methodist movement were left without churches and leadership. And so reluctantly, John Wesley ordained Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury as superintendents or bishops and sent them to lead the people called Methodist in the new country.

And because we were established around the same time as this nation, our governance matches the governance of the United States. Our church is a democratic based structure with three branches – a Judicial Branch, an Executive Branch, and a Legislative Branch.

When the people wandered in the wilderness, God dwelt among them in a tent that was free to move.

When the people were established in a kingdom, God dwelt among them from an established temple in the capitol.

And when the people were forming a new nation, our church came to look like the new democracy with a book of laws and rules at the center of who we are.

I know we’d like to think that book is the bible, and… well, it is… but there is another book that holds us together as a denomination: The Book of Discipline.

In many ways, this has been our attempt to hold the tension between the fixed and the free, the movement and the institution.

This book provides stability in the sense that it is our reference point and foundational document of our identity. It contains the Articles of Religion that have been handed down through generations and a constitution describing who we are and how we function, and which is very difficult to change.

But it also provides flexibility in the sense that everything else within this book can be changed every four years by a simple majority of delegates to the General Conference.

Like the United States Government, we have a judicial branch – a Judicial Council of 9 persons who are elected to rule on matters of disagreement. We also have an executive branch, our Bishops, who are tasked with upholding the Discipline and caring for the ministry of the church.

Lastly, the General Conference is our legislative body. It is our version of Congress, only our gathering time is much shorter – for a couple of weeks every four years. It is where we gather to discern God’s will for the future of our church in the world. It is the place from which we boldly proclaim where God is and sometimes we have gotten it wrong and sometimes we have gotten it right.

If you look at the history of our church, it has not been one continuous solid history.

If you trace the line from the Church of England, the lighter brown set of roots, (and the side of our history that I know better), we can see that our lack of welcome and inclusion for African American siblings led to the formation of not one, but three new denominations.

Conflict over slavery and the authority of the bishops split the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844 – years before the Civil War.

Sometimes splits were the result of contextual differences. Sometimes because there was greater freedom needed that the more established church couldn’t hold within itself.

But the church has also merged and reconnected and joined with others for missional reasons. In 1939, previous splintering was repaired as we became the Methodist Church.

And in 1968, we merged and formed a union with the Evangelical United Brethren Church.

One of our own – Rev. Harold Varce was a pastor in the EUB at that time and he was there at the founding of the United Methodist Church. In fact, thanks to Harold, that “United” from the EUB tradition made its way into our name.

What would be the witness of this new denomination?

How would we hold in tension the call to find God at the margins with the oppressed and to boldly proclaim the established truth of God?

One of the first things that we undertook was to write our Social Principles. While not church law, they are “the prayerful and thoughtful effort on part of the General Conference to speak to the human issues in the contemporary world from a sound biblical and theological foundation as historically demonstrated in United Methodist traditions.” (Preface)

And so in 1972 – with the denomination only four years old, much of the attention was focused on our section regarding human sexuality. It was a time of great experimentation and misconduct in society at large and this was our first opportunity as a church to speak.

In the midst of our larger statement was a phrase “persons of homosexual orientation are persons of sacred worth.” An amendment was made and approved which said, “We do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider it incompatible with Christian teaching.”

In many ways – right there in the midst of that statement which says two very different things – is that tension between tabernacle and temple. God’s presence dwells in the life of LGBTQ+ persons – they are of sacred worth… and the practice of their orientation is sinful to God and requires repentance.

Since 1972 – we have experienced a back and forth, push and pull, tug of war over whether we will fully embrace and include gays and lesbians in the life of the church or if we will stand firmly against the tides of culture upon the traditions of our established church.

That tension has reached such a point in the life of our denomination that it has overtaken much of our witness and work.

And so we reached a point in 2016 where we could not move forward without discerning a new way forward. Over these past two years folks have gathered to pray, discern, converse, pour over scriptures, wrestle, and finally we are at a point where their recommendations of various possibilities will come to a special General Conference, focused solely on this topic in February.

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll back up and look at the scriptures behind our conversation. We’ll look at the landscape of our current dilemma. And in the final week, we’ll explore together the implications of the various proposals.

Here is what I want us to remember today.

When we were in the wilderness AND when established as a powerful nation – God dwelt among us.

When the temple was in ruins AND when the church was being persecuted – God was with us.

God has been leading, calling, pushing, prodding, rebuilding, connecting, pruning, and forming God’s people from the very beginning.

Not once has God left our side… although sometimes we have turned our backs upon God.

In some ways, I think God gives us what we need as far as a structure for whatever moment we might find ourselves in history. Anything that will help us grasp onto the very simple fact that God love us and calls us to be God’s people.

Through the ups and downs of churches that have split and reconnected and reimagined their existence, what is constant is the Lord and Savior of us all.

So whatever comes, whatever changes, whatever new possibilities lie before us, I pray that we would trust that God is present in the midst of it all.

Amen.

Who Is Included in We?

Posted on March 4, 2018Leave a comment

Everyone loves a hometown hero…
The kid who excelled at sports or music or science and then went away to accomplish their dreams.
When they return home, that child is often greeted with love and adoration as friends, family, and neighbors cheer on one of their own.

This was the case when Jesus came back home to Nazareth. He stopped by and visited friends and family, broke bread and shared stories.
But then, on the Sabbath, Jesus went with others to the synagogue and was invited to read from the scroll. He opened up Isaiah and began to read…

As he did so, the people realized that their little Jesus was all grown up. They celebrated him. They raved about how articulate he was and what a powerful speaker he was.

And then they wanted him to perform for them all of the miracles he had done for others.
It if it was good enough for them, it’s good enough for us.

And Jesus refused.

Not because he couldn’t do those miracles…
But because his understanding of calling and purpose was far bigger than that small community in Nazareth.
The Word of God, the Son of Man had not come into this world to save only his own neighborhood… but all of humanity.
The entire community revolted and turned against him as a result, driving him from town.

Last year, the film Wonder Woman brought to life a superhero who also understood her calling and purpose to be bigger than her own community.
Diana of Themyscira is an Amazonian – a people who were created by the Gods to watch over and protect humanity from their bent towards destruction. They believed they had accomplished their task and have retreated away to live on a peaceful island paradise, protected from the outside world and totally unaware of the conflict and struggles of others.
Until war shows up on their doorstep.

While the rest of the Amazons don’t believe that this is their battle to fight, Diana believes that they are called for just this purpose.
She argues with her mother, the leader of the Amazons, and eventually sneaks away in the dark of night so that she might journey “into the world of man, bringing with her the ideals of justice, equality, peace, and love.”
Her mother, Hippolyta catches up with her just as she is about to depart and instead of a blessing, she speaks these words to Diana…
“You have been my greatest love… today you are my greatest sorrow.”

In both the story of Jesus and Wonder Woman, we find ourselves stretched to think beyond our own community, beyond who we have typically defined as “we.”

Every community needs boundaries.
To have a sense of identity and purpose we define ourselves by what we share in common and what we value and hold dear.
This is something that pastors do often when speaking with a congregation. To build a sense of energy and camaraderie, I will often find myself talking about the things that we believe or do or say.
“We believe this…”
“We all understand that…”
“We feel called to x, y, z…”

Whenever using that term, “we”, however, it is important to think about who we are including.
In some ways, we use the word “we” to limit the boundaries of community and group ourselves into “us” verses “them.”
And, we assume that everyone who is sitting with us thinks and believes the same as ourselves.

As your pastor, I know that isn’t true!
The reality is that we find ourselves at various stages in our Christian faith and have doubts and struggles with different aspects of that faith.
We are more diverse than we like to believe.
Just to demonstrate… shout out your favorite color…

If I stood before you all and said, “We love the color blue,” not only would it not be true… but it would begin to exclude those of you who feel differently.
In the same way, I couldn’t faithfully stand before you and say, “We are conservative” or “we are liberal”… or even “we agree to disagree.” If I did, good portions of this congregation would feel excluded.
We have to be careful about how we use the word “we” because it lumps people together in ways that are unfair or inaccurate…

But we can also use “we” to expand our sense of belonging.
The people in the synagogue responded so favorably when Jesus first began to speak… perhaps because they had a limited sense of who he was talking about.
They nodded in affirmation, hearing the familiar words of Isaiah that had been a part of their tradition.
And yet, Jesus stretched their application of that scripture.
He expanded those familiar words to be about more than just their own liberation and salvation and healing.
He wanted them to understand that the “we” God has come to save is about far more than Nazareth or the Israelites… but was for the entire world.
And that stirred up anger and discomfort.

There is a poem I read once by Eddie Askew that describes that feeling of discord that comes when we are pushed beyond our definitons of “we”:

And, suddenly, I notice with unease, you standing with them, outside the boundary wire of my concern. Not asking that they be admitted to my world, but offering me the chance to leave my warm cocoon, thermostatically controlled by selfishness, and take my place with them, and you. At risk in real relationships, where love not law, defines what I should do.

The thing about our heroes is they can challenge us to become the best versions of ourselves.
They can push us to think beyond our limitations and our boundaries.
They can stretch our sense of “we.”

The thing about superheroes, however, is they will never quite be exactly like us.
Diana has a sense of calling that is for this entire world, but she will never quite be one of us. She is, a demi-god, child of a Zeus. She identifies with humanity, breaks down the barriers of us and them, but we will never be like her.

While we might think the same of Jesus, he turns our concepts of us and them on their head.
Instead of simply being an ideal and a model we look towards, Jesus invites us to become like him.
Jesus doesn’t just push our ideas of us and them, but tears apart any distinction.
When we choose to follow Christ, when we allow his understanding to guide ours, then we actually become a part of a new body, a new sense of “us”.

In Christ, there is no distinction between us and them, Jew or Gentile, slave or free, man or woman.
In the body of Christ, we are one.
Thanks be to God… Amen.

something to identify as

Posted on September 12, 20111 Comment

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I heard a song on the radio this evening by Patrick Stump featuring Lupe Fiasco called, “This City.” It’s a new single, it has an okay beat and the lyrics are kind of lame. As one listener texted in, it sounds like a song that should be on high school musical. Teen pop, whatever.

But as I sat there thinking about the lyrics, I thought, here are two guys who are totally proud of their city, in spite of all of the bad things that happen in it. They mention corruption and gentrification and racism and even the weather, but they love that city (Chicago) anyways.

My emergent cohort read this month Tony Jones’ new book “The Church is Flat.” He describes a relational ecclesiology that he finds within emergent theology and emergent congregations across the United States. Being his doctoral dissertation, it is a bit heavy, but was a good mental exercise to explore.

As I drove in the car listening to this new song playing on the radio, running through my head was the conversation I had only an hour before about identity and belonging and authority.

Pulling from new social movement theory and characterizations, Jones claims that the emergent church movement helps people to claim a “new or formerly weak dimensions of identity.” In the process, the “relation between the individual and the collective is blurred.” The actions, behaviors and identity of a person become all wrapped up into the movement and your very participation in that movement gives you an identity.

Think about it like this: 50 years ago when a couple introduced themselves to new neighbors, one of the first sentences they might have shared was, “We go to the Methodist church.” Their very identity was wrapped up in the church. They raised their children in the church. They belonged on the church softball team. But then came the 60’s and 70’s and that communal identity started to be questioned. The next generation would go back to the church only to raise their kids, if at all. And then the GenXers who followed were either not brought up in the church at all, or it was a background institution that had little to no bearing on their personal identity.

As an offhand comment, there was a mention somewhere in the book about how that dillusion of identity also has come from parents marrying outside of their denominational upbringing. A child of Lutheran-Methodist parents might have far less denominational loyalty as someone whose whole family has come from a particular tradition.

If we look at the religious landscape today, there are few who proudly claim their denominational identity as one of the primary markers of their personal identity. I have a friend or two with a “John Wesley is my homeboy” t-shirt, but they are few and far between. I am much more likely to encounter someone who tells me that they are a farmer or a vegetarian or a Marxist than I am to find someone in my daily walk who will tell me, I am a Presbyterian. Our churches do not form the core of our identities.

The claim that Jones makes in his book is that this is not true in emergent congregations. In these communities, the life of the individual is tied to the life of the movement. They claim it as a part of who they are. It impacts where they eat and what they buy and who they spend time with. And that is a conscious action based upon their identity.

I am torn at many times in my life between denominational loyalty and faithfulness to the Wesleyan understanding of community. While at times I hope and pray that they can be the same thing, there are many days when it is not so. I want to belong to and lead a church that lives out their faith every single day, that is committed to the virtues that community cultivates, and that deeply seeks to follow Jesus Christ and the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, the institutional church just doesn’t do it for me. Sometimes, I see glimpses and I’m energized once more.

I guess what I’m saying is, I want to write a song called “This Church.” And I want to proudly proclaim to all the world that I love this church, in spite of its flaws. I found my faith in this church, it raised me to know and love God, and if I have my way I’m going to stay here. You can burn it to the ground, or let it flood, but this church is in my blood. And I want to be a part of a community that every day in small and ordinary ways, seeks the will of God in all that they do. I want to be a part of a community that has the gospel in its blood… whose very identity as individuals is predicated on their participation in the body of Christ called the church in this place.

Is that so much to ask?

do I look/act like a pastor?

Posted on August 23, 20112 Comments

Today, a young man wandered into our church building and needed a place to sit for a while. He looked like he was having a hard time and wanted a quiet place to think, pray, wrestle.

I invited him upstairs to our sanctuary and told him he was welcome to stay as long as he needed to.

In the middle of the day, I had to run a few errands, so I crept upstairs to see if he was ready to go. Bent over in prayer, I didn’t have the heart to ask him to leave. I let him know I would have to go, but that the door would be unlocked and he could stay in peace. He was grateful… evidently he had already tried another church in town and it had been closed. I tried to think if any of the other churches would have staff present at that time of day and I honestly wasn’t sure. It is a small town and pastors are often visiting or in meetings. We can’t all afford full time staff for the office. And often our buildings are closed and locked when there are not people present. It is a sad, but honest reality.

photo by: Dennis Rassing

About 45 minutes later, I came back in. I checked on him and asked if he was okay. I asked if he needed anything. He didn’t really seem to want to talk. So I left him to sit and made my way back downstairs.

He came down later and asked if the Catholic church in town had a confessional. I gently explained that our local priest had three congregations and I wasn’t sure if he was here in Marengo today. He lowered his shoulders and left the building, thanking me for the use of the space.

As a few minutes went by, I wondered why I had not offered to hear his confession. Mediated individual confession is not something we do often in the Wesleyan traditions. Often, our prayers are between us and God and the presence of a pastor/priest is not always considered. We corporately offer confession and we leave space for silent individual confession, but it is not thought of as a means of grace in the same way it is in other traditions. It didn’t cross my mind, to be honest. Well, not until he was already gone. Maybe I doubted my ability to offer what he was looking for.

But then I began to wonder if he had even thought of me as a pastor. He walked into the church and saw me sitting behind a desk. I could have been anyone. A secretary, a volunteer. Was there anything about me that would have led him to believe that I was someone who was willing and able to offer forgiveness and grace to him? That I have been called to God to offer prayer and time and the word with him? Or did he simply see a nice young woman sitting behind a desk, who offered a place to sit for a while? As he asked about the local Catholic church, was his background such that he would have even considered a female to be someone he could talk with about what was on his mind?

For the first time in a long time, I wished that I had been wearing a clerical collar in the office. I wished I had a name tag on that said “Pastor Katie.” I know I told him my name and I asked for his, but now I can’t remember if I had mentioned I was the pastor. We don’t normally have folks walk in off the street, but it does happen. And I want them to know that I am here for them… and in a small town like this, I want them to know that a pastor is available and willing to minister to them in whatever way that they need. In some ways, I feel like I failed in that today. I take a lot for granted and I get comfortable in my own skin in the office. I didn’t think intentionally about carving out space for my pastoral role regarding this particular person.

But then again, maybe space was all he needed. A friendly face, a non-judgmental smile, a place to sit.

That young man remains in my prayers. I don’t know where he came from or where he is going. I pray that although I wasn’t the person he turned to, and although I might not have responded the way I should have, that he will find the peace and the comfort that he is seeking.

Who, Me?

Posted on August 21, 2011Leave a comment

As we start off this morning, I want you to find a blank corner of your bulletin or the hymn sheet and scriptures, and I want you to write on that corner one thing that you are personally good at. What is one thing that you know how to do and do fairly well.

Turn to one other person and share what that one thing is that you are good at doing and sometime recently when you got to use that skill or talent.

Thank you all for sharing! We will turn back to those slips of paper in just a moment, but for now, will you pray with me?

This past Wednesday night during our weekly communion service, we wrestled a bit with our gospel lesson from this morning. Who do YOU say Jesus is? How would you describe him to friends or neighbors?

We talked about our various answers, we had communion and sang and headed home… but one lingering thought has been stuck with me ever since.

This question – “Who do you say that I am?” comes up in two different gospels. Here and in Mark. In Mark, Peter gets the answer right, but is almost immediately berated because he challenges Jesus – he doesn’t want Jesus to suffer and die.

But here, Peter is praised. God bless you, Simon bar Jonah! You are my rock, petra, Peter and on you I will build my church.

The difference between these two is striking. The two gospel passages recount the exact same event, but with very different outcomes. So there is something deeper going on here… the passage is not just telling us about a conversation that took place. It wants to teach US something about how we respond.

In Mark, Peter hears about the plans of God and immediately rejects them. He wants to do it his way, with his idea of success. He already has it all figured out in his mind, and Jesus is getting in the way.

But in Matthew’s gospel, Peter doesn’t even get that chance. Jesus immediately turns to him and says – yep, you are right, that is who I am…. Now let me tell you who you are… really are.

What Matthew does here is share with us a timeless truth… when we meet Jesus face to face – when we recognize who he truly is… then we understand who we are and what we have to offer at the same time. We begin to see how everything we have and everything we are fits into God’s plans.

Last week, in Romans, we talked some about the vine and the branches. The branches have no identity outside of their core, their roots. So as soon as we know who we are connected to, Jesus Christ – we know what we are supposed to do.

I want you to find that piece of paper that you wrote on this morning. It might describe some kind of talent or skill, something you trained long and hard to learn, a gift that came naturally for you. Whatever it is, it is something you see within yourself.

Hanging on to that word or phrase, I want you to hear what Paul writes to us from Romans chapter 12.

You see… he continues his message from last week about what it means to be connected to Jesus Christ.

Hear these words from the Message translation:

Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

This slip of paper does not represent something that you own or possess or even have control of. It represents something that God has given to you. It represents a part of God’s plan for this world. It represents one way in which the Body of Christ, the church, is called to share the love of God.

Have you ever thought about what is written on your slip of paper that way?

Have you ever thought about how your cooking or knitting or carpentry was a part of God’s plan for this world? Or how your mechanical skills or photography or singing could bring the love of God to your neighbors? Or how your laughter or negotiating skills or sense of direction could be used to share the gospel? How your mathematical sensibility or your hard work or your ability to listen is an integral and important part of the church?

Or is your first response whenever the call of Jesus Christ comes to look around and say, “who, me?”

When I was in junior high and high school I loved speaking in front of people. I was always the first with my hand up when it came time to read out lout in class. I tried out for every play and musical. I signed up for speech contests. I competed, I practiced, I simply loved doing it.

Speaking in front of people came easily to me. It was never something I had to think twice about. I knew that in whatever field of work I chose, this skill would be useful. It was something in the background, something I could fall back on, something I never had to think that much about.

But one day in college, I was asked to prepare a sermon for our campus worship. Easy-peasy… I had written speeches before. And I had preached before as a part of my youth group. I didn’t worry too much about it. In the midst of the preparation however, in the midst of my wrestling with the text and really trying to find God in the middle, something in my clicked.

I realized that I wasn’t just writing a speech. I was sharing God’s love with people. I wasn’t just talking about something I knew… I was talking about something that I had experienced. I wasn’t up there acting or putting on a persona… this was real. This is what I was made for. God wanted me to share his good news with people. God created me to do this!

As Paul tells the people of Rome and by extension us… we are like the parts of a body. We get our meaning from the body as a whole – our gifts and skills find their purpose only in relation to these other people and parts of God’s family.

I want you to think for just a second about what this church would be like if I refused to get up and preach on Sunday mornings. If I decided to keep my gifts to myself, instead of sharing them.

Take a good hard look at what is written on your slip of paper. You have something unique and beautiful and powerful to offer. You are called by God to do amazing things. Yes, YOU.

So… Do you share that gift with the church? Have you let Jesus show you how you can make a difference?

This whole room is filled with amazing skills and functions and talents. With each of those gifts offered back to God, this church would be absolutely unstoppable.

As Paul writes: since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, lets just go ahead and be what we were made to be.

In everything you do, in everything that you offer, from the moment you wake up until the moment your head hits your pillow at night – ask how God can use you. Take those gifts you have and share God’s love through every goodbye you make in the morning and every meal you deliver to the elderly in our community and in every car your fix and in every meeting you have at work. Share the good news through every post you make on facebook and every class you have at school and in every game you play.

You don’t have to wear Christian t-shirts or go around saying “Jesus Loves You” to every person… just do what you do with integrity, with love, with compassion. Paul breaks it down like this:

If you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.

We are the body of Christ. We are his living, breathing, hands and feet in this world. In everything you do… let God’s will shine through.

Ezra and Nehemiah… rewriting history

Posted on February 9, 2011Leave a comment

In my local emergent cohort, we have been reading Phyllis Tickle’s Prayer Is a Place: America’s Religious Landscape Observed. As this book has been in the back of my mind, I have been thinking about how we look back and view history. As my carpool buddy Tim put it, we are always rewriting history and every history has a slant.

As I dove into Ezra and Nehemiah then this week with our Disciple study, I have been wrestling with how they, too, are rewriting history. They come parading back into the land they were so visciously torn away from and suddenly begin setting themselves apart, above, against those who are already in the land. They are so terrified of being punished again by God, of being sent back into exile, of having all of this tenuous peace destroyed that they immediately begin talking about righteousness and what makes them righteous. All of the foreign wives they fell in love with and the children of those marriages have to go. This is about purity, this is about a common identity, this is about trying their darndest to not make the mistakes of the past.

I found myself greatly disliking these two books as I read them through this time. I lamented the fact they were so exclusionary, so focused on works and rightousness and reclaiming what was theirs. I had never seen the texts in that way before, and it troubled me.

But I realized that we also have a group of people who grew to experience God very differently in the land of exile than their brothers and sisters who were left behind in Israel. And so when they come back, they find folks who did not sit by the waters of Babylon and weep. They find folks who managed to go on worshipping God in the land without the temple. They find folks who are now complete strangers to them… adversaries.

Having this revelation about Ezra and Nehemiah helped me to see how difficult it is to lay claim to a space in the world without pushing others away. In any attempts to define ourselves, we inevitably also say what we are not. We tell our stories in such ways that show how we have arrived at a certain place and that might mean that others must be written out of our histories. Is this a good or a bad thing? Is it simply reality?

Alongside these two accounts, we also find the prophet Haggai who tells this story without such an exclusionary tone. We find the story of Esther who was in the diaspora and who saved her people by her relationship with the gentile king.

What a wonderful thing it is that our sacred texts can hold these contradictions together. That we can witness to both our struggle to self-identify and to include, to be a people among people and to be a people set apart. What it means to be faithful in this world is not a black and white story, but it is a complicated interweaving of telling our stories, saying who we are and who we are not, working to make the best of our lives in a given place, our attempts to be faithful, our mistaken journeys down wrong paths… and through it all, God is still God.

And thanks be to God that in each of our readings of these sacred texts we are lead deeper into a realtionship with God.