When Ministry Doesn't "Work"

Like so many others, my church is finding new life and renewed energy through recent, creative, small - and not so small - attempts to step beyond our comfort zones into relationship with neighbors and strangers.  I'm proud of my church, God's People in Portland.  We're rising to the challenge.  God is surprising us.

And/but/yet/even so...

Like so many others, our church members, on their honest days - in the midst of all of these really good things - have the courage to ask: What if it doesn't work?

What if it doesn't work?

It's an interesting question.  The question reveals a hidden tension that exists in most quasi-missional organizations.  The tension is that, while St Christopher's and others may be convinced that the old ways of being Church are passing away - remember Bishop Spong's provocative book title: "Why Christianity Must Change or Die" - the compulsion to change issues from the implicit promise that "this new way will work."  But whether or not the new way "works" remains evaluated, ultimately, by the measure of people who begin coming to church, if not by increased financial giving, as a result of these efforts.  The new ways are (perhaps erroneously) accepted as means to the old ends.

What if it doesn't work?  What if the people we serve in God's Name never come around?

Of course, put that way, God Himself, on an honest day, might have asked the question.  It's the story of the whole Scriptures: a wayward People running from the God who will not stop loving them.  What can we learn from God's love?  In our growing to share God's heart for others, are we discovering the full depth and breadth of unconditional love, which of course is love without strings and conditional expectations?

Maybe this is precisely the door to the intersection of our passions, God's call, and - as Frederick Buechner put it - the world's deepest need: that in asking ourselves what else we would be doing if what we are presently doing doesn't work, we find the permission to give that part of ourselves, freely, abundantly, without reservation and/or resentment.  Maybe we discover the true selves God has given us to share with God, one another, and the world.  And we glorify God.

This whole past week, I've been remembering a stranger I met years ago in Chapel Hill.  It was late at night, I was driving home - the familiar 15/501 - when the car began making a terrible noise.  I pulled over at a gas station.  A flat.  I am proud to say that I am much more equipped now for such a moment and such a discovery, but the truth in that moment was that I didn't know where to start.  I was a theology student.

A security guard checked in on me, made sure I was okay, and left.  Said he didn't have time, that it wasn't his job, which was true.  It was getting really late.  A few, panicked minutes later, the gas station clerk emerged from his store and made his way up to me.   He playfully chided me for my lack of knowledge, and then he jacked up my car and changed the tire.  I helped some.

As he was finishing, I reached for my wallet to see if what I had to give him.  The clerk, now more friend than clerk, stopped me.  "No, no," he said.  "But Allah be praised."

What if the only thing that "works" in our efforts as Christians, as Church, is that God is glorified as we reach out in the Name of Christ to the poor, the lost, the rich, the hungry, the theology students?  No expectations.  No strings.  Do things become simpler when the strategic mission before us is "glorify God in all things"?  Can that ever not "work"?

Unconditional. 

 

Lent Madness Bracketology: Seeding the Saints for the Tourney

Lent Madness is taking the world by storm!

By "Lent Madness," I refer of course to the online competition in which two saints are matched up daily for popular vote on the way to the ultimate prize, the Golden Halo.  By "world," I mostly mean my relatively small circle of Episcopal clergy friends who use facebook.  But hey, we're having a good time.

The online set-up is exceptionally creative in its educational purpose: each saint receives a short write-up to inform the voter's decision.  These write-ups are exceptional well written and brief, giving each voter plenty of biopic material to ignore on the way to voting for Enmegahbowh because his name is super cool.

By way of confession, I haven't joined - and probably won't - in the voting festivities.  All my heart, mind,  soul, and strength says that it's just a game - and a really well conceived game, too.  But saints pitted against saints?  In the heat of battle?  Joan of Arc v. Lancelot Andrewes?  I start to get queasy.  And that's before Stanley Hauerwas's voice starts rattling in my head: "'Best' is not a theological category," he says.  I know, I know, it's just a game...

To be fair, I think Hauerwas himself would have fun with the Madness.  My neuroses are my own, and I own them.

Of course, my second difficulty with Lent Madness betrays the gross inconsistency within my own logic.  If on the one hand I am made queasy at the thought of competition between the saints, on the other hand, I am equally grieved that the saints are not seeded (ranked) on the merits of their lives and reputations.

Simply put, while I don't want to have to pick between James the Apostle and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I really, REALLY don't want to pick between them in the first round of the tourney.  That's a 4 v. 5 match-up, not an 8 v. 9 or 5 v.12.  Monnica v. Augustine may have all kinds of Freudian intrigue, but Monnica against the Blessed Virgin Mary is probably more honest for the first round.  In this mother of all match-ups, the BVM walks away in a landslide.  After all, isn't it the David v. Goliath nature of the early games that makes March (or Lent) Madness compelling?

I don't want to see Thomas Merton and Philander Chase in the opening round; I want to see myself squaring off against Matt Gunter or Sean Maloney in a play-in for the privilege of being crushed by Thomas Aquinas.

So...seeding the saints: where would you start?  Who has the coveted one seed locked up?  Who's on the bubble?

The Number One Seeds

1.  Peter
2.  Paul
3.  Augustine of Hippo
4.  Thomas Aquinas

The Two Seeds

5.  The Blessed Virgin Mary
Admittedly underrated as a two-seed, a dangerous match-up that no one seeds wants any part of.
6.  John the Beloved
7.  Francis
Francis is a bit of a surprise here, but, like Mary, his SOS numbers (strength of statues) are off the charts.
8.  Patrick

But what do I know?  Post your top fours and two seeds.  If we're going to do this thing, let's do it right.  Let the real Lent Madness begin!

Are Christians Hiding from Health?

At the end of yesterday's post, I left you with the question, "How can we better embody the priority of health in the lives of our members, ourselves, as the community of faith?"

Our answers to this question will helpfully reflect back to us our basic understanding of "health," I think.   For example, it may be natural to think of our pastoral care ministries and our work with the sick, but does our understanding of health have a larger breadth and depth available to it?  Do we pray for the health of our ministries?  Do we at least think we know what healthy ministries would look like?  Can we name unhealthy ministries in constructive ways?  If we all want healthy communication, what would make communication unhealthy?  Just what is the difference, for example, between gossip and a prayer request?  Do we pray for disciplines and practices of spiritual maturity and well being to be evident in the common life of the Body of Christ?

Underneath or behind these questions, I believe there is another, rhetorical question: What part of ourselves does the Gospel of salvation not mean to touch?  The rhetoric of the question challenges us to explore those dimensions of our spirituality and ourselves wherein we resist the healing of God.  

And so we go back to the question:  
What does it look like to promote and embody the priority of health as the community of faith?
_________
In 1982, James Wilson and George Kelling wrote an article for "The Atlantic" called "Broken Windows."  In it, Wilson and Kelling offered a theory to 1) account for the increasing levels of urban criminal violence and 2) propose steps to regain a healthy order.  In short, broken windows argued that public order is fragile: if you don't fix the first broken window, soon all the windows are broken.

Says Kelling, "What Jim and I hypothesized in the paper was that disorderly behavior leads to citizen fear of crime, which in turn leads to citizen actions to withdraw, and as citizens withdraw control over territory, the predators begin to move in." (1)

NPR's David Schaper further explains:

Kelling says in the 1970s and early '80s, most police departments were letting the small crimes slide, reacting instead to the shootings, stabbings and other serious criminal problems so many big cities were facing. While residents certainly worried about such major crimes, Kelling says many people also were sweating the small stuff happening around their neighborhoods.

Kelling, again: "What Jim and I did was to give voice to a demand of citizens that wasn't being heard. And more than giving voice, we gave legitimacy to the idea that dealing with minor offenses was an important part of policing."

By giving legitimacy to the idea of dealing with minor offenses - by giving voice to the voiceless retreating - broken windows empowered residents to reclaim their territory and move toward community policing.
________
Empowering the body to promote the health of the body - that sounds like a conversation that might interest the would-be, healthy Church.  Indeed, Kelling reports that many other disciplines are adopting versions of broken windows to promote an environment of health.  Does broken windows have any insight for, or application to give, Christians?  What would an application of the theory look like in the Church?  Is there any point of helpful overlap here with Matthew 18:15 - "if your brother sins against you..."?

I mean all those questions openly, as in, I don't have answers.  I am made mindful, as a beginning, of the importance of the audibly spoken forgiveness which we Christians are so often loathe to speak.  "Isn't it enough that I forgive her in my heart?" we say.  "After all, forgiveness is mostly for the one who needs to forgive."  But these words so quickly becomes an excuse for tolerance of small, broken windows, which signal to others a lack of an overall healthy order in and throughout the body.  Audibly spoken forgiveness, on the other hand, names a point of mutual accountability: the sin has been named and forgiven, the grieved and the griever have gone public in their intention toward visible reconciliation and peace.  And maybe most significantly of all, the body has been reminded of the presence and practice of restorative spiritual disciplines within the community of faith.  This reminder comes as an encouragement to the healthy, who can trust the body in the common commitment to grow into the full, mature stature of Christ.
________


 (1) Kelling and Schaper quoted in the NPR story that ran on the day Wilson died, March 2, 2012.

Health, Hippolytus, and Holy Oil(or why I carry an oil stock in my pocket)

The proverbial "they" warned me that I wouldn't have the foggiest idea of what it means to be a priest for at least five years after ordination.  Having passed that milestone a while ago, I believe "they" were wildly optimistic.  And of course they were right in what they were really saying: that time will teach you how the truth of this God, the truth of these people, and the truth of God at work in you for these people intersect in ways that are up-building, humorous, glorifying to God, and true.

One of the things I have learned is that for me to be a priest is always to carry an oil stock in my pocket.  I do this in part because holy unction is the sacramental rite I administer with the most regularity, period.  It's not even close.  I also do this to remind myself that when I'm not administering the sacramental rite I am nevertheless never in the presence of someone not in need of healing, even - indeed, especially - when I'm alone.  This doesn't mean I am always anointing, of course, but I am always reminding myself of the truth about each of us.  Each of us has a story, carries a burden, and has some version of yearning - met or unmet - for the divine touch of the One who came as our Great Physician.  Indeed, one of the images that came to frame my early discernment during college, with my church family at St Barnabas, was the image of the Spirit poured out as holy, healing, drenching oil on the whole of the earth: all that is, was, and will be, dripping with the salve, the ointment, of God.

The other day, while looking up the origins of an unrelated prayer, I came across this earliest form of oil blessing from the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus:

Sanctify this oil, O God, with which you anointed kings, priests, and prophets, you that would grant health to those who use it and partake of it, so that it may bestow comfort on all who taste it and health on all who use it. (1)

"...you that would grant health..."

Holy unction typically finds itself reserved for the critically - or at least obviously - sick.  But salve - salvation - is for us all.  And who can forget our Savior's marginally sarcastic words: "I didn't come for the well, but for the sick."  So John writes, "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."  The Church cannot take for granted that health means more than the work of pastoral care for the critically or obviously ill; health must be at the heart of our ministry and mission; in a real sense, health names our participation in the work of God for the world.  


Indeed, we have good reason to believe that because health is central to the mission of God, the priority of health to our ecclesial visions is likewise essential.  So the Bishop of Southwestern Virginia, for example, goes so far as to state in his website biopic that "My vision for the diocese is that we have healthy and wholesome clergy and lay leaders so that we may carry out the promises we make at baptism and serve the world in the name of the risen Christ." 

What I find so striking about the bishop's vision is that he sees health as the necessary contribution of his office to best promote the work of the whole Church for the Kingdom of God.  Techniques, targets, even passions for others, require health as their basic foundation.  

If this post comes across a little Captain Obvious, forgive me.  It's only been five years.  Yet, especially if it comes across so, help me out: generally speaking, churches are not known as places of vibrant health.  How can be better embody what we think we already know?

Churches are places, say Peter Steinke and others, in which the least mature often dictate the pace and purposes of the pack.  Abuses by clergy and lay alike are frequently swept aside or tolerated in the name of Christian kindness.  Churches are not alone in this, of course.  As Rabbi Friedman once wrote, even Jewish congregations tolerate destructive behavior because to confront it would not be "Christian."
 
Let me hear from you: truly, how can we better embody the priority of health in the lives of our members, ourselves, as the community of faith?

Tomorrow, I want to reflect on the recently departed co-founder of Broken Windows, James Wilson, and ask if his theory has health-promoting insights for the Church.
 
_______________



(1) In Hatchett's Commentary on the American Prayer Book, page 463.

Baptism and the Cross

Let us pray.

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.  Amen.

What a courageous, brave, and uniquely strange prayer (bizarre, really): Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of the cross and find it to be none other than the way of life and peace.

This prayer appears most frequently in its capacity as the collect for Fridays in Morning Prayer, both rites one and two, pages 56 and 99, respectively.  The prayer also serves as the collect for the Monday of Holy Week, just after Palm Sunday, which means that - not counting this sermon - you could very well encounter this prayer 53 times over the course of a year.  Not as often as you brush your teeth (I hope), but enough to be regularly shaped by it: the brave, strange prayer to walk in the way of the cross.

The collect for Fridays and the Monday of Holy Week is not your run of the mill prayer or your run of the mill understanding of the cross.  But it’s the prayer you end up with when Jesus teaches his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.  It’s the prayer you end up with when that same Jesus turns to each of his disciples, to each of us, and says, “take up your cross; follow me.”

Do you suppose the disciples flinched a little?

Walk in the way of the cross.  The cross, which is, says St Paul, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks.  Even among contemporary Christians, many people mistakenly view the cross from a bit of a distance - as the thing Jesus does for us, so that we don’t have to.  (Like the old Scrubbing Bubbles commercial slogan: “We work hard, so that you don’t have to.”)  To this mistaken understanding, Jesus on the cross becomes a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card that allows us to keep living the lives we were already living, where Jesus is at best a divine stamp of approval and at worst the promise of forgiveness in the end.  Something for which we’re thankful but by which we’re not actively engaged or challenged.

While it’s true that Jesus’s dying on the cross saves us in a way that we cannot and need not add to, it’s also true that Jesus’s own words invite us to follow him into the salvation that he wrought there, on the cross.  “Take up your cross and follow me,” Jesus says. 

The words perplex us.  Evidently, Jesus’s cross does not excuse but makes possible our own.  Put differently, precisely because Jesus saves us on the cross, you and I don’t have to fear the cross.  Jesus lays out the cross like it’s an opportunity that he makes possible.  And maybe it is.  We can dare to follow Jesus into the kind and quality of love we had thought was just for fools.

If you were here last week you remember how I talked about this church in North Carolina in which the baptismal font was deep, like a tank, this large, stone cross, and that the cross was situated between the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth stations of the cross, the stations in which Jesus is crucified, dies, and is taken from the cross for burial.  We are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus.  And this is where we put our children.  This is where we put our hope.  The way of the cross made open to us - the way of life and peace.

So it may sound simple, but it’s significant, I think: Jesus on the cross does not protect us from the cross.  But because Jesus saves us on the cross, you and I don’t have to fear the cross - which becomes our opportunity.  Now we can dare to follow Jesus into the kind and quality of love we had thought was just for fools... 

Like the woman who poured out a year’s worth of wages in oil and washed Jesus’s feet with her hair.  Foolish, extravagant, costly love.

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, says the psalmist, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me.”  Take up your cross, and follow me, he says.

To Jesus’s invitation to take up our cross, I pose two honest questions:

What does this look like, and why would I want to?

To the first question, I am sure that it looks like more, but not less, than the baptismal promises we mentioned last week.  The five questions of the faithful.  Do you remember them?  They’re not going away, guys... (I was tempted to buy a Starbucks gift card as an incentive to the faithful, but Rebekah said that was too gimmicky for this crowd.)  The five visible signs of the death and resurrection we are baptized into...

Will you:

Keep breaking bread, keep meeting for prayers,
Ask God's forgiveness, when (not if) you fall into sin,
Proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ,
Seek and serve Christ in all people,
Strive for justice and peace?

We are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus.  These are the visible commitments of your baptism.

In the moment just before the first Easter morning, the millisecond before the breaking dawn and the Good, Great News of the empty tomb, creation is said to have sat on the edge of its seat with a question.  The question was this: Will the God of all things really stand to be affiliated with a Son who hung out with prostitutes, tax collectors, made friends with the ungodly, loved his enemies, even died for them, put the sword away, drank the cup of judgment so that we might drink forgiveness; will the Maker of all that is really stand to be represented like this, by this One?

And Easter morning rang out with God’s glorious and resounding “yes.”

Now, our baptismal promises pose the same question to us: Will you also stand with the one God stands with?  Will you stoop to be affiliated with a Savior who looks like this?  Whose way is the cross; whose path is forgiveness, mercy, truth, who overcomes the powers of the world by exposing their weakness, by not availing himself of them, whose life is the unbroken announcement that God’s love has come near and that God’s love takes a shape: the very particular shape of the cross. 

Father, forgive them, he said.  Self-giving.  Restoring.  Reaching.  Friends with the thief.  Poured out.  Naked.  Not hiding.  Bringing all things to God.

Before the cross, the best we could manage or imagine was some version or another of “do unto others as you would have them to do unto you,” itself an admonition from Jesus, but which in our hands quickly became a kind of altruism thinly veiled in self-interest.   A kind of calculated investment based on probable - or at least desirable - return.  But now, at the cross, we can say with the saints, “Love one another as Christ as has loved you.  Love him, love her, as Christ loves that person.”  Love foolishly.  Love with your life.  Love when it costs you to love.

Twentieth-century nun and philosopher Edith Stein asked, “Do you want to be totally united to the Crucified?  If you are serious about this, you will be present, by the power of His Cross, at every front, at every place of sorrow, bringing to those who suffer, healing and salvation.”  It is here, on the cross, that we find the fearless love to love as God loves us.  Because God has loved, does love, us first.  It’s only here, on the cross, that we discover what God’s love really is. 

So that is some foundation for what it looks like.  But why do it?  Why walk the cross-shaped path? 

Not just because Christ is at the end of the path.  Like a leprechaun with a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  But because Christ himself breaks in the Kingdom, there, in that moment, on that defining hill. 

So John Howard Yoder writes:

“Here at the cross is the man who loves his enemies, the man whose righteousness is greater than that of the Pharisees, who being rich became poor, who gives his robe to those who took his cloak, who prays for those who despitefully use him.  The cross is not a detour or a hurdle on the way to the kingdom, nor is it even the way to the kingdom; it is the kingdom come.”

I want the way of the cross, because the cross is where I receive the Kingdom of God.  God, give me, grant us, grace to follow where You lead.

Amen.

[Sermon preached March 4, 2012, Lent 2, at St Christopher's]

What Yoder Might Say about this Sunday's Gospel

A short passage today as we approach this Sunday's gospel in which Jesus and Peter stage their annual throw-down.  It comes from the blog's namesake, John Howard Yoder, and his work The Politics of Jesus:

Here at the cross is the man who loves his enemies, the man whose righteousness is greater than that of the Pharisees, who being rich became poor, who gives robe to those who took his cloak, who prays for those who despitefully use him.  The cross is not a detour or a hurdle on the way to the kingdom, nor is it even the way to the kingdom; it is the kingdom come.

Hetta and the Harbor Bridge: What Young People Want to Teach the Church

A few of us at St Christopher's find ourselves making regular trips across the bridge these days (to Corpus Christi) to spend time with our sisters and brothers on the campuses of Del Mar College and Texas A & M University - CC.  These trips began with a simple goal: make young adult friends from whom we can learn about the faith, and whom we can serve.  This is a tremendous passion of mine: to listen to Christians in others stations of life and to learn from their understanding and appreciation of the Faith.  To the college student: what is it about this Gospel of Jesus that you simply can't put down?  At least among Episcopalians, we share the same words, but each generation discerns distinct emphases.  Much of my own early life was rooted in the company and under the tutelage of strong Anglo-Catholic influences.  (Despite my age, I come off "retro" or, as one older clergy said, a "throw-back" - tho I hope they don't throw me back.)   Maybe because of this, I am keen to lean forward in both directions, and to learn the faith through the eyes of younger friends.    


A recent conversation with a younger friend in nursing school (1) gave me and my church family much to consider.   Hetta loves the Lord and wants to talk with others who do, too.  Denomination is important to her, but it is not a litmus test for conversation.  Hetta observed that many churches want to use the gifts of young people, but few churches have imaginations for those gifts beyond the churches' existing needs - plugging gaps.  Hetta doesn't want to simply fill a need; she wants to be recognized as a person with her own voice.  She wants in on the conversation.  Hetta especially resents it when churches seek to justify extraneous agendas through the guise of reaching young people.  "Why don't they just talk to us?  It feels like they either have me figured out already or don't really want to know."  Hetta wants the chance to be heard; and she wants to hear others, even if she doesn't agree with them.


Hetta said that she and her friends are summarized well by the name of a popular website: www.wearenotfake.com.  "We are not fake" is a virtual connection place where young Christians can talk honestly about life and faith.  Hetta emphasized that not being fake is not a judgment on others - it's supposed to be good news, the good news that the only thing that drives her away from Christian community is people who refuse to be who they are.  The only rejection is for those who have rejected themselves.


Hetta's commitment to imperfect people walking the pilgrim walk together came to mind yesterday, when I read this reflection from Jean Vanier.  It appears in the Ordinary Radicals prayer book, and only on February 29, which means it's a good thing I caught it when I did.  Here's Vanier's reflection:


“Almost everyone finds their early days in a community ideal. It all seems perfect. They feel they are surrounded by saints, heroes, or at the least, most exceptional -people who are everything they want to be themselves. And then comes the let-down. The greater their idealization of the community at the start, the greater the disenchantment. If -people manage to get through this second period, they come to a third phase — ​that of realism and of true commitment. They no longer see other members of the community as saints or devils, but as -people — ​each with a mixture of good and bad, darkness and light, each growing and each with their own hope. The community is neither heaven nor hell, but planted firmly on earth, and they are ready to walk in it, and with it. They accept the community and the other members as they are; they are confident that together they can grow towards something more beautiful.”


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(1) We'll call her Hetta, because I don't know any Hettas just now.  And I like the name.