how it went

Last night's gig was great fun. If you ever have a chance to catch a show at the Fifth Province Pub do so. It's a nice venue...not too loud and just big enough to handle a crowd. The five of us managed to bring a few fans and the regulars stuck around and danced. That's always the most satisfying thing to me...dancing. People waltzed and jigged and got good and drunk. It was an Irish pub. I want to do it again...and it looks like we might be able to do so.

The proprietress wants us back in the autumn. They are booked through October in the pub. Perhaps even more astounding is that there is a chance that we could get a slot in the larger concert space at the IAHC and not simply the pub. Gaelic Storm, Seven Nations, The Young Dubliners and others have graced the stage...and actually will be appearing with The Tossers this July at the Gaelic Festival! I would love a chance to appear on that stage. One of the Girls has never given a full on concert. We've appeared at many a pub and even the occasional church lawn. But a concert? With lights? And a sound engineer?! That would be something else. That's a rare occasion.

I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes.

Oh, for what it's worth, all the instruments are in one piece. The Orpheum No. 1 banjo held its own really well. It was a great time...sans flambe. I'll post pictures soon.

excited...

Hey. I have a gig tonight. I might set something on fire. I'm that excited.

Yep.

Flaming Mando. That's me.

a friday aside

One aspect of serving others is listening to the call within to express your gifts - those talents you have that make you feel infinite when you are doing them. When we express those gifts, the Holy Spirit works through us in ways we may never know directly, touching the lives, hearts, and minds of others.

- Joanna Bates

I gave up caffeine a couple of weeks ago. It was time. I was drinking far too much again. And my usual grumpy and sour demeanor was hightened by its presence in my body. Ever since then, my brain has been more a muddle than usual. Some may say that this is hard to imagine, but it's true. Caffeine would offer a manic focus when I needed it. Now...well...every day is a sunny day in a field with all the time in the world to muse on daisies.

I'm doomed.

I have been working through the sermon. It's going to be okay. I need to finish it this morning. There's too much going on this weekend for me to have to write then. The difficulty is that I have this message that won't leave me alone. It's different than the direction I thought I would go. And I am exhausted from trying to sort the two out. Here's the lectionary for those who are interested. There are a lot of options this weekend. So, I chose Deuteronomy, Romans and Matthew. Psalm 46 is another option. The quotation in the box is a Sojourner's reflection upon it. Thus its inclusion in today's post. I may incorporate it somehow. I am finding it to be a helpful bridge.

You see, I cannot get Myanmar out of my mind. I thought I was going to get to use this Deuteronomy passage as a platform to reflect on our Children and Youth Sunday last week. But Myanmar won't leave me alone. Homes have been washed away. Were they foundations built on sand? Or is the end of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (the Matthew passage) asking us to think of another way to get at this crisis in Myanmar?

God does not send the flood. No longer. Can it be that the house that is truly washed away is that of the Burmese government? Perhaps that is God's wish...and the fruit of Jesus' proclamation. And those who perished are the poor (in spirit) who Jesus extols at the beginning of the sermon. It's hard to muddle through.

We're supposed to have rain today. That'll be interesting. The garden could use a little watering. And One of the Girls has a gig this evening. I hope you'll come out to see us. It should be a good time.

thursday fumblings

Yesterday I met with Larry for a cup of coffee and some deep conversation about ministry and being a pastor. We both seem to be struggling with some of the same things lately...though, in our different ways and different reasons. Larry has posted on being nomadic. It's an interesting post fraught with Larry's lengthy prose and worth your time. In our conversation we alluded to Jorge's musings on Larry's sermon from Sunday. Larry may be at his theological edge...a tipping point of sorts. Jorge recognizes this and I relate to it.

Larry and I spoke of spiritual homes and if there is such a thing. His nomadic existence is testimony to his faith being rooted where he is and not in some congregation from childhood. And yet...Christ seems to be calling us both out to the edge of our own strength and theology, our own abilities as pastors. There are, of course, examples of this in scripture. Prophets are called and sent. Jesus will send people out two by two to proclaim the Kingdom of God. All are asked to step out beyond themselves somehow only to return to their center and to their communities in the end.

We spoke of many things...retreats and family. It was a good conversation. I am sad that it was as brief as it was.

In a brief aside, Mike posted about Tippett's book, Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters and How to Talk About It. He offered up this great quotation about scripture and truth.

I've come to understand religious texts and traditions as keepers of truths more openhearted and realistic than many of the arguments against them and the practices in their orbit. We have to think about truth and about knowledge itself differently - the insides and edges of words and ideas, the richness of their forms - to understand the nature of religion and the work of theology, the human attempt to pin God, however fleetingly, down to earth. In many ways, religion comes from the same place in us that art comes from. The language of the human heart is poetry. Music is a language of the spirit. The metier of religious ideas is parable, verse, and story. All of our names for God are metaphor - necessary license, approximation, and analogy. Our sacred texts burn with that knowledge and dare us to use all of our faculties of intelligence and experience and creativity. But we forget this; our fact-and argument-obsessed culture is deaf to it, blind to it.

Interesting stuff.

I'm working through the sermon this morning. It has been two weeks since I preached. So, there's a little swing into which I must return.

Pax.

a note from tom

Hey friends!

ONE OF THE GIRLS is playing this Friday at the Irish American Heritage Center!

So, now that we've hit it big, I guess there's nothing to do now but retire...

It's best to go out on top.

Friday, May 30, 2008
9 p.m. (all ages until 10 p.m.)
ONE OF THE GIRLS
Fifth Province Pub
Irish American Heritage Center
4626 North Knox Ave.
Chicago, IL 60630
No cover charge

"Plenty of free parking"

"One of Chicago's hidden gems"

"Pub food, like fish and chips, onion rings, corned beef sandwiches and Irish sausage are
available for those wishing to grab a bite to eat... pub food is served from 6pm to 10pm."

--Irish American Heritage Center website

You know, maybe if you come see us this Friday, we'll have so much fun playing Irish
music and interacting with our fans, we'll want to come out of retirement.

Yeah, we'd do it for the fans.

And the music.

OK, maybe a beer.

ONE OF THE GIRLS
Michael Scott Duplessis
George Vincent "Tripp" Hudgins, III
Thomas Christian Schorsch
Roger "Panthro" Sherman
Sean Michael Francis Sullivan

a good weekend

Well, I am back at it today. I had a couple of weeks off from preaching...much needed, I might add...but now the summer schedule is upon us at Community Church and I have much to do. We changing things up just a little for the summer. For example, typically we have our children leave at a certain point during the worship service. So, anyone under the age of 10 or 12 is gone. This summer, both to give our Sunday School staff a break and to explore how to include our younger ones in church, only the VERY little ones will leave the regular worship service. We'll see how that goes. I'm not sure if people buy it or not. That's to be expected.

I will have to be aware of how I preach, of course. An intellectual discourse on "holy memory" might not be ideal. However, telling our favorite stories, movement, testimony, sharing, and "holy play" will all be welcomed.

This past Sunday was our Children and Youth Sunday. Everyone was great. The littlest ones acted out the Creation story for us. The grade school children shared a play that they wrote (with a little help) and the youth led the service with the two graduating seniors preaching. Good stuff. I am still mulling over a couple of things. I have never been part of a church that had a Children and Youth Sunday before. So, I am still a little unfamiliar with it all and have some questions I need to answer for myself. All in all, however, it was a good time.

Well, I need to make some coffee for my wife and get ready for work. I hope everyone has a good day. The weather here has changed back to that early spring feel again. The temperature got up to about 80 degrees yesterday. Today we might not escape the 50's. Oy, but I need some heat.

suspicious cheese lords

Ubi caritas et amor...

There is no sermon to post this morning. I will be preaching with two of our youth this morning for the Children and Youth Sunday worship service. We'll be talking about the quotation Falsani offered that I posted a couple of days ago. The central point of the sermon, however, is in the simply faith claim that Durufle set so beautifully.

Ubi caritas et amor Deus ibi est.

prayer and fasting

Reconciler shared this on their website. Jorge pointed it out. I think it deserves attention and consideration.

The council met this week and decided to have a week of response to the recent tragedies in Burma and China. There are two ways the council is encouraging us as a congregation to respond as a people of faith. First we will have a week for prayer and fasting. We encourage each of us to choose one day to spend in fasting and prayer for the softening of the hearts of the Military leaders of Burma who are preventing aid to come into the country and allocated to the people in need and to simply lift up in prayer all those who are suffering from such great loss in both countries. Second we are collecting means for contributing financially through Episcopal, Covenant and Baptist channels. You will be receiving information about how to make contributions through each denominations aid agencies.

May God have mercy. Five million homeless in China. Untold numbers dead and dying in Myanmar in what is becoming (in some eyes) opportunistic genocide.

home sorta

Believe it or not, the heat is still on at our house. The temperatures have been dropping down into the 40s this week during the night. So, we still have heat. I have heard a scandalous rumor that this weekend is Memorial Day weekend. June is just around the corner. How can this be true? The heat is still on.

This is Spring in Chicago. There's no getting around it. In a week the temperatures will shoot up into the 80's and summer will be here. No transition. No gentle movement. Just heat. Ah well.

As far as I know there is no reason for me to go into the office today. So, I'll be home and go visit some folk. That'll be good.

Justin linked to this post about Facebook. Thanks, Justin. I'll be leaning on it for Sunday's sermon moment. This is the passage that caught my attention:

Most people have two primary places — home and the workplace — and then there is a third place where they feel anchored and part of a chosen community. It might be a bar (illustrated beautifully in the TV series "Cheers") or a neighborhood restaurant, a house of worship or a bowling alley. Everyone, Oldenburg argues, needs a third place.

What is your third place? Do you have one? If not, do you wish you did?

roger williams is blue like jazz: part, the seventh

There are things you cannot understand, and you must learn to live with this. Not only must you learn to live with this, you must learn to enjoy it.
Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz (p. 205)

This quotation from Miller is an interesting one. It is found in his chapter on worship. He spends most of his time talking about mystery and awe. At first I was bored by this chapter. "It's all a mystery!" Yay. Great. So what? Then I let myself ruminate for a little.

As someone who thinks of himself as a liturgist (I'm in a club of one.), I was really looking forward to reading through this chapter again. It left me flat. Then I took a deep breath. I've been so cooped up in my head where liturgy is concerned that I had misplaced the "awe" file. I have forgotten my heart.

Good liturgy always strives to convey mystery. Liturgy is a performative metaphor of the encounter with the mystery that is God. So, yeah, Miller is right on. He's not dissing liturgy by not speaking of the service. He's trying to remind us what worship is at it's core. It is Wonder and Awe...and a big Thank You!

Now liturgy is no magical formula that leads immediately to wonder and awe. It is the physical expression of a spiritual reality (Damn, but I read too much.). Awe precedes the liturgical moment in some ways. It can serve to define the experience of God. It may or may not inspire. It may or may not convey wonder or awe itself. But it can. Sometimes a worship service will call forth something from us. But that's not the purpose. Worship is a symbol of the encounter. It is an expression of gratitude and a description of awe.

Or something like that.

Here are the links to the other Blue Like Jazz entries.

blue like jazz
roger williams is blue like jazz: part, the first
roger williams is blue like jazz: part, the second
roger williams is blue like jazz: part, the third
roger williams is blue like jazz: part, the fourth
roger williams is blue like jazz: part, the fifth
roger williams is blue like jazz: part, the sixth

heh...a little emerging trinitarianism

sermon mumblings: a facebook faith

Set our hearts on fire
with love for you, O Christ our God,
that in that flame we may love you
with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul,
and with all our strength, and our neighbors as ourselves;
that following your way of righteousness,
we may glorify you, the Giver of all good gifts. Amen.
www.oremus.org

This Sunday is our Children and Youth Sunday at church. The little children will sing. The grade school children are performing a little play about Saul's conversion. The youth are reading scripture, leading the congregation in prayer and preaching. Yep. The graduating seniors preach. It's not mandatory. Nor are they put out there with no safety net. I will preach with the two young women who are graduating this year. The sermon title is "A Facebook Faith." We're preaching in the round, so to speak. The three of us will be seated and hold a conversation on the nature of community and truth...how different communities claim different (and competing) truths...and how they have come to where they are in their lives. Yes, they are reading postmodern stuff in high school.

It should be fun.

roger williams is blue like jazz: part, the sixth

We are worth our earning potential, you know. We are worth the money we make.
- Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz (p. 188)

What is the trouble with tithing? I know I have always had trouble with it. I doubt I have ever given away 10% of my income. It is, as I understand it, a spiritual shortcoming. I have hangups. It's true. I want to know why I should support any institution...at all. I want to know what's in it for me. That rationale, of course, is foolish. But that's where I go very quickly. Heck, I receive my salary from a church and I still wrangle with this. (With the way pastors are taxed...there is no way that I'll ever enjoy a tax break from my donations even if I give more than 10%...My incentive to give has to be something else.) And it is not even about getting stuff. I want the church (Since we're reading Miller, let's talk about church.) to represent me to the world. Now, what is that about? Is that putting the cart before the horse? I don't know. That's an interesting question to ponder.

In one of the chapters we're reading for Sunday is about Miller's own struggles with giving money to the church...or to any other agency. I do give. And I could give more. Sometimes I forget that I am not catering 20 hours a week anymore. Sometimes I forget that my perceived financial insecurity is more of a memory than a present reality. I can give more. I can likely give more than 10% if I think it out clearly. But I fear.

The quotation above is from a little tirade that Miller offers us about how our culture may indeed shape us into understanding our value. We have to have big jobs earning big paychecks to be of value. This is a bit of an overstatement, but he's on to something. Income is one of the easiest ways to measure a life even though it measures only a tiny part of that life. We measure financial wealth and poverty. We establish systems of governing and services based on wealth. Money is the grease for most of the wheels of our lives. No wonder we can become fixated upon it.

Miller will offer a different option: obedience. That will trouble most of us. Obedience has such a bad rap these days. And it should. Still, Miller is on to something important. Jorge Sanchez spoke to obedience in his sermon this past Sunday.

Most often we think of obedience as submission, and perfect obedience as total, blind submission, but it is not so. It cannot be quite so simple, as the Trinity suggests. Obedience requires of us a triple commitment to the reality of a situation, to what we want and need, and to what others’ want and need. That is obedience.

Obedience is the fulfillment of real needs for real people...not imagined wants or desires, but needs. It is the fruition of the Beatitudes. That is obedience. Blessedness is obedience.

I'm sure our class will have a field day with this on Sunday.

monday videoblog: a thesis-sized hole

monday videoblog: a thesis-sized hole



Add to My Profile | More Videos

not preaching

Just a reminder...I'm not preaching this morning. There's a guest preacher standing in to give my brain time to recover. Ah, blessing the feet of the messenger all day long...

In the mean, however, take a peek at this very brief post.

Shouldn’t I be craving a new kind of Christianity that will undo my traditional evangelical upbringing while satisfying my newfound love for diversity, social justice, and, of course, soul searching?

Not at all.

The Young Fogey pointed his readership there as well. The emphasis is mine. Have a great Sunday, everyone. This morning we hand out Bibles to a couple of our younger attendees. It should be fun, but one never knows. Heh.

graduation picture

Frank Yamada took this picture. Bad hair day for me, but these things happen.

voyages and graduations and suchlike matter

To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today Seabury is graduating yet another class of students...M.Div, MTS, and DMin folk shall walk, share the eucharist with all gathered, and sing. It should be a good time.

This morning I was reminded that today is the feast day of St. Brendan. How fortuitous.

Yep...Today is about journeys. Wandering and milling about in the name of God. Some of us live lives as if we were cast adrift at sea. Some of us have direct flights with no stopover at O'Hare. We are on a journey...a pilgrimage. Today our journeys end and begin again. A ministry colleague reminded me that these times are bittersweet. True enough.

and the mental flailing begins

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
- Albert Einstein

Some day I will have to learn how to enjoy my small successes...like finishing the thesis. Not to be cruel to myself, but I woke up this morning with a small war going on in my brain. One voice was crying out "There is more to write! There is more to write!" Another voice was responding "It's done! Caloo! Callay! It is done! Hooray!" I am elated and anxious all at once. I half expect the thesis adviser to call me at any moment to tell me that there is something else I need to do. I am a mite frustrated with my brain right now. Ah well...It's PTSD...Post-Thesis Stress Disorder, a common affliction around this time of year.

So, today is a less frantic day than I had anticipated. I have been given a great gift. It seems that I am not preaching Sunday after all. Yes, I wrestled with this. It's Trinity Sunday. I love Trinity Sunday. I want to cue up cool science fiction themes when Trinity Sunday comes along. Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, The Holy Trinity (cue theme music)! I was reading Arturo's post (ala Jorge) on "a strange and colorful orthodoxy." But then I received an e-mail from someone who attends Community Church. Their parents are coming in to visit. Their father is a pastor working in an academic setting. He knows what it is to finish a thesis and then entertain one's friends for graduation in the same week. So, he offered to preach. We discussed some interpretive things online and I said "Thank you." It is a great kindness...though it feels strange to not preach on Trinity Sunday. If my brain continues to flail about for the rest of the week as it has been the last 12 hours, no sermon would come anyway. I will simply have to get over myself.

Anyone know how to do that?

other things to obsess about
1. the title "suburban abbot"
2. desert monastics
3. why I have not been to see the mandoguru in two months
4. American Sign Language and liturgy
5. The University of Chicago Divinity School's "Bridge" program
6. badminton
7. croquet
8. Inter-congregational celebrations in Wilmette

That should hold me for a while. Pray that I am less cranky today than I was yesterday. Yeesh.

seabury folk, attend!

Friends have started to arrive. Jane Ellen is here. Luke and Susie are on the way. Lovely. Graduation and the ensuing madness will be great fun.

and now for the good news...

The thesis is done.
Done.
Fini.
That's all he wrote, folks!

Thanks for all the good karma, the prayers, the general kind thoughts etc. I appreciate it all greatly. Keep it coming!

roger williams is blue like jazz: part, the fifth

Tony and I agreed that what God wants us to do is sit the bench in humility and turn the other cheek like Gandhi, like Jesus. We decided that the correct place to share our faith was from a place of humility and love, not from a desire for power.
- Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz (p. 116)

This past Sunday our study group met and it seems that all of us were deeply touched by the chapter on confession. It seems that Miller and his friends set up a confession booth at a college festival. Students would come and the Christians who hosted the booth would confess their sins and the Church's sins to the students who came in. I wish we would have explored this more...and if there was any sense that we could do something similar somehow. What would it look like for our congregation to apologize for the sins of the Church...even the ones we have worked so hard to distance ourselves from. Such an act is in part a claim of ownership of things like the Crusades and African slavery in the US...not to mention the genocide of the native Americans and various other things some of us have done in the name of God. There's a long list.

The wisdom in the passage I have quoted touches on this somewhat. There must be a stated intention of humility and love. This is not to clean the slate so that we can be influential...or powerful, to use Miller's word. It's not to increase the number of people on the roles. It is simply the act of confession, plain and simple. Such an act is to humble ourselves before God.

I suggested that this is also the purpose of having a confession in the liturgy. We don't usually do this. I bring one in during Lent and sometimes in Advent. But that's about all. Corporate confession is a rare thing in Baptist life. Though, I wish it were not. It can be an opportunity to do exactly what Miller is talking about...or at least it can lay the ground work for such a profound confession.

been busy

Wang Zhenyao of the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs said 11,922 people have died in the quake centered in Sichuan province.
- www.cnn.com

The natural disasters in the Pacific basin and Asia are unbelievable. Myanmar and China are struggling under the weight of these two events. And, as I understand it rain is predicted for the Burmese peninsula. That's what they need. Rain. Pray for them.

I submitted yet another draft of the thesis yesterday. Graduation is Friday, people. So, this is much closer to the wire than I had anticipated. It appears, however, that I simply cannot follow directions. Astounding, I know. It's the citations and bibliography that have been slowing me down. Little periods, semi-colons, parenthetical citations in the midst of a foot note...and all of them have to be formatted in a specific way. Details. Tiny details. They are important. I get it. I'm not denying it. But I have very few healthy brain cells to begin with. To burn a few out on semi-colons is still somewhat maddening.

I should hear this morning if there are any other changes I have to make...crazy bibliography stuff. Sigh.

pentecost poem

April 26-May 6, 1988

No doubt the light has shined on our proceedings
But light alone falls short of what we’re needing.
Give us fire.

Sufficient, not illumination lacking,
Flow thoughts, juxtapositions, logic’s trackings.
But we need fire.

Fire, not just inspiring fresh ideas;
Fire, not merely bright’ning this arena
Where words are strung together with precision---
Syntax and tense and text display cohesion---
O, Give us fire!

Ignite a flame that kindles in our minds
And burns the rotting wood; mount in its path
A holocaust to cool sophistication.
Fire will warm, but not to warmth confine,
Fire that destroys, consumes and yields to wrath
The smallest tinder-twig of resignation.
O God, Your fire!

With friction of the Word and Wind entreat
And sear with fiery tongue and glowering heat
To melt our will, all hard and ice-encrusted;
To forge an alloy with no threat of rusting
Burnished in the white-heat, flames out-thrusting:
Living fire.

No sacrifice, however erudite,
Will ever be consumed by only light.
Give us fire.

Jaime Potter-Miller. ©1988. Songs of Quiet Trust 1994-1995, United Theological Seminary. Dayton, Ohio.

Y'all have a good day. I'm going to grab a cuppa.

pentecost sermon

The Spirit, Freely Given

How do we know how to receive?
How do we know what it is to receive love?

These are the questions that have been haunting me this week as I have prepared for this sermon.

Do we really know how to receive love?
How do we learn to do this?

The scripture readings this morning are about the Holy Spirit, God’s abiding presence in the Church…and the Church’s responsibility to share that Spirit with the entire world. It is the Feast of Penecost. The scriptures are very clear that God gives Love. God pours out God’s Holy Spirit upon all gathered. They suddenly understand one another’s languages. They suddenly speak languages that they had never known. It’s a miracle!

When I read this passage, however, I am struck with the ease with which the followers of Jesus receive the Holy Spirit. There is almost an involuntary quality to how they receive God. It’s like they are possessed. But what we are witnessing here is not possession. The Holy Spirit does not possess us. We receive the Holy Spirit. It arrives, and we have to receive it. We receive God’s Love.

Who were these men and women who received the Holy Spirit? And what did they know that I don’t know about receiving it? Because sometimes I think I just don’t know how to receive love.

The Holy Spirit is God’s Love, a Comforter, Advocate and Guide…a wind…the breath of God with a mother’s voice saying, “I love you. Be made new.”

Perhaps the hardest thing about love is learning to receive it.

True love, divine love, is a free gift…no strings attached. You cannot buy it. You cannot earn it. It is simply Given. All you can do is receive it. And though it sounds so very simple, it is the hardest thing about Love…even God’s Love.

Sometimes I get greedy with love. I want to be the only one to receive a certain kind of love. As a young boy I may have said that my mother’s love is only for me. It is not for my little brother. I would invent ways to be her favorite. I would compete with my brother for my mother’s affection.

We still do this as adults. I sometimes might find myself competing with the cast of one of Trish’s shows for her attention. It’s entirely unnecessary, but in a fit of insecurity I might just get greedy.

We also compete for accolades and acknowledgements. We strive to outdo one another in greatness. We compete, plain and simple. And the winner receives love. The loser…well…Have you heard about the lonesome looser?

Somehow we think that we can earn love. We can purchase it with deeds and smarts. It’s social Darwinism. Those who evolve (succeed, produce, etc) are the ones rewarded. Love does not work this way. God’s love does not judge in this way. God’s love sees us all as equal. God pours out love upon all.

Pride, too, can be a barrier to receiving love.

I am a pastor! What do I need with love? I give! I do not receive. I am ordained! I received One Big Infusion of Love. Ah well…with pride…

We can shut ourselves off somehow…thinking we don’t need love…or the Holy Spirit, or in the end even God. We look at our lives and our accomplishments and believe we have it all. Or our giving becomes a form of control and it’s not love at all. We can give to keep people at a distance. We give so that we do not have to receive. It is a form of judgment. “Those poor people out there. They are not like me. I should give to them.”

Often this is because we are hiding some wound of our own. We don’t want people to come too close to see where we are broken. So we toughen up and give to distract from our own brokenness.

Maybe it feels safer somehow to give than receive. It is certainly less vulnerable. But in then end…this kind of giving is not even about love. It’s about ego…and a need for self-importance. Jesus always ranted against pride…Religious pride, economic pride. Jesus said that we are measured by our weakness. Blessed are the meek, the lowly…but woe to those who think they have it all.

Another barrier to receiving love is shame. We think of ourselves as unworthy to receive Love. We are not beautiful enough. We are not tall enough. We are not talented enough. We are not smart enough. The list can go on, and on, and on. Somehow we can think that we simply are not enough…something in us is deficient.

This shame can be institutionalized as well. It becomes our various “-ism’s.” Racism. Sexism. Social Darwinism. That one goes both ways, doesn’t it?

We can be abused and shamed by one another. We can be told we are 3/5ths a person, or no person at all for so long that we come to believe it. So we lock ourselves up, shut ourselves off from everyone. We harden our hearts. We define ourselves by shame. And we cannot receive love. We shame one another. We injure one another so horribly sometimes that Love becomes impossible.

We create leper colonies. We create entire social structures where people are permanently outcast. Jesus, he moved among the outcasts, he slaves, the women. He gave God’s love freely to all…no such judgment existed for him…no such shame.

Receiving love can be so very difficult. Seeing beyond competition, pride and shame so that we can receive something freely given is harder than it looks.

The congregation in Corinth struggled through this. Paul is writing to them because it seems that they have lost a little perspective. They have forgotten some basics about the nature of God and how God gives. They have, it seems, begun to rank the gifts of the Spirit. And it shows that they may very well have forgotten what it means to receive...to receive something freely given.

“Oh! Bob has the gift of teaching. He’s so much cooler than Frank. Frank is just a prophet.”
“Well, I heard that Agnes speaks in tongues!”
“No way! Well, she has Bob and Frank beat hands down.”
“Yeah, those guys should learn their place.”

The Spirit, says Paul, is poured out upon each person equally. There may be different gifts, but no one gift holds primacy over another. To rank them is a trap. It’s competition, pride and shame institutionalized...and an ecclesiology founded on pride, shame and greed is no ecclesiology at all. It’s simply not the Church.

In so doing, they make it harder and harder to receive. They make it impossible to Love.

Paul says that the nature of the Holy Spirit, the nature of God, is to give and love equally and freely.

How is this so? How is this possible?

It’s a matter of focus. The focus of Love is The Giver. God is the Giver of Love. Christ is the Bearer of Love. The Holy Spirit is Love Breathed Out Upon All. We, strangely, are not the focus of Love. That love is not meant to build up any one of us more than another. The love is for the Common Good. Love, the Holy Spirit, the gifts that God offers are for the building up of all. There are no pedestals. There is only God’s unity and God’s peace.

Pentecost is often called the Birthday of the Church. This might be a nice excuse for a party. But I think that focusing on this might be a bit of a mistake. To focus upon the Church is not the point of Pentecost. The point of Pentecost is to focus on how all the world is receiving the Love of God all the time…and may not even know it.

There are people out there who cannot receive love. Systems and relationships pin them down. Pride and competition rule their lives and they cannot receive Love. The Holy Spirit and the gifts that come with it are for the building up of the entire world…for the common Good. We, we are to be witnesses to God’s Love poured out equally. To receive Love is to recognize this truth…to uphold the weak, the weary, the burdened, and the oppressed…the poor.

Learning to receive love is learning that Love is for all…

Receive now the Love of God. Amen.

le baptiste hokey pokey

I even went so far as to become a Southern Baptist for a while, until I realized that they didn't hold 'em under long enough.
- Kinky Friedman

This morning we ABC types in the ABC-Metro Chicago region will gather to talk and plan and eat carbohydrates. Generally speaking this is a good time. I like my colleagues in ministry. Somehow we seem to uphold one another pretty well. We are a diverse group ethnically and theologically. And we honor a certain creativity...I don't know quite how to explain it yet. I'll get there some day. Suffice it to say that they think I have something to offer the Church. That's a terrifying notion to be sure.

Each of these gatherings is an opportunity to discuss what is going on in the region (summer camp, for example) and broader issues important to many of us. This morning we'll talk about racism and "the prophetic preaching voice." I'll let you know how it goes.

I turned in yet another draft of the thesis yesterday. I'm at the altar of Kate Turabian now. Citations, people. Get the citations right the first time. Unless you have some research assistant willing to go back to the library for you, get it right the first time. Oy. Veh. Yuk!

So, it continues apace. It's truly done. I'm walking "sans asterisk" next week. What joy.

See you all later on. The sermon is complete. I'll post it Sunday morning. Until then, enjoy your weekend as you are able.

finishing

Sorry to be away today. I've been reworking my thesis per my adviser's recommendations. And there's this sermon thing. Oh, there was also playing with my four year old neighbor. He needed someone to watch him for an hour or so.

I'll get back to the blog soon.

huh...

roger williams is blue like jazz: part, the fourth

Because in the end, the undercurrent running through culture is not giving people value based upon what they believe and what they are doing to aid society, the undercurrent is deciding their value based upon whether or not they are cool...Eminem believes he is a better rapper than other rappers. Profound. Let's all follow Eminem.
- Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz (p. 105-6)

Miller struggles with his own self-defined shallowness. He recognizes his own tendency to follow trends, fads and generally anything "cool." Christianity, he says, is not cool. Thus it is hard to share. And the ways that it is shared most often, or most overtly, are part of the reason that Christianity is not cool. Televangelists, mega-churches, and "tracts" handed out to unsuspecting tourists on the beach all contribute to a necessary and perhaps even healthy cultural backlash against Christianity. Miller struggles with what makes the uncool relevant.

Henri Nouwen speaks about the struggle with relevance as well. He switches the terms around a bit and I had to do a little translation to sort through some of my own confusion. Nouwen says that Christianity is not relevant. It's not meant to be. Nouwen means "cool." He also means pragmatic, utilitarian, and useful. It's not something one can package and sell. It's not marketable. In the end, Christianity is about loving and following Jesus. And Jesus leads us to the places of utmost darkness and vulnerability where our egos are useless and cool/relevance matters for nothing at all. Jesus takes us to the places in our lives and our neighbors' lives that are most broken and offers healing.

Most of what Miller writes in the two or three chapters rambling through my head right now are about that vulnerability. It's about getting away from trying to be hip, chic, cool, or relevant. I am a mandolinist. So what. That's not the Gospel. My mandolin is not Jesus. People are not coming to church looking for a mandolinist. The mandolin may be cool...but that is not going to save them.

Now, where I think Miller and Nouwen both struggle (and I do as well) is the reality that sometimes being cool opens the door. Being relevant opens a door. But they are right. The fruition is uncool. Vulnerability is uncool. It does not get you elected. It does not win you the adoration of countless fans. You will not get your picture on the cover of some magazine...

...unless you are Robert Downey, Jr. But then, he's very cool. Heh.

happy birthday, trish

Today is my wife's birthday. I am madly in love with my wife. She is talented, lovely, creative, funny, and generally speaking a fine specimen of a human being. We met ten years ago, started dating about eight years ago, were married a little over three years ago, and I hope to be celebrating many, many more birthdays with her.

Tonight, sadly, I have a church council meeting. So, Trish and I will have to enjoy the birthday dinner tomorrow evening. I've made reservations. It should be great!

So, if you get a chance, drop her a note (She's on Facebook.).

I love my wife.

sermon: the great escape

Sermon: Ascension Sunday, Year A
The Community Church of Wilmette
May 4, 2008

The Great Escape

"Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." Acts 1:11

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”

It’s a cry of desperation by a sideshow magician in the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy and her friends have been on a long journey to find the Wizard. He lives in a distant city, far away. He is “great and powerful.” He is to be feared. But he is the only one who can restore them. He is the only one who can give them a heart, a brain, the nerve, and can send them home. So the heroes journey and struggle, obsessed with what lies in Heaven…or Oz…and wonder what kind of wizard the Great and Powerful Oz must be.

Of course, as most of us here know, what they discover is that the heart, a brain, the nerve and the way home were with them all along…and Oz was just an illusion.

This is the nature of speculation. Sometimes it can be circuitous.
Sometimes it can be it’s own trap.
Questions without answers can become distractions, ways to uphold illusion.
They can keep us from the work that is set before us.
This is one facet of the context that Luke speaks from
in this Passage from Acts this morning.

“Tell us about Heaven.
When will Jesus come back?
What will it be like?”

Luke is writing to the second generation of the Church.
He’s trying to tell them how the
first generation of the church lived together.
Acts is the record of that history.
Luke wants this new generation to understand how they should live.
But there seems to be a problem. They are distracted.

You see, from the very beginning of our history,
those who followed Jesus wanted to know
what the Future would bring.
Political reform? Economic renewal?
How would it benefit them?
Won’t somebody tell us? Because God seems so far away.

And when will Jesus be back?

The very first thing that Luke does, however,
is to help his reader to move beyond this line of questioning.

“Our faith is not about predicting the future,” he says.
“Our faith is about redefining the present.”

Jesus will Return. There is such a thing as Hope.
God is not far away.
Scripture is consistent in expressing this.
This is the core to Christian belief.
In the end, God sets everything aright.
Luke expresses this same hope. But Luke also offers a warning.

Do not become fixated upon the Heavens…distracted.
“’Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven…’
…on a pie in the sky…afraid that you might be left behind?
You will, instead, find God in the world around you.
This is Christ’s promise at his Ascension.”

We will receive the Holy Spirit, which is the presence of God in the world. It is a gift given to us. It defines who we are…and empowers us to do the work of the Kingdom.

This is such a strange story to tell. Jesus is lifted up into the clouds. Here it is, like something from the SciFi Cannel. And he opens his history of the Church with it.

But he moves so quickly. He affirms the story. He does not deny this strange tale. But he moves on. He gives it only eleven verses. He rapidly moves on to the history of Being the Church. What does it mean to be the Church? This is the question Luke wants to ask.

In Acts, the followers of Christ still think of Following Christ as a political movement…”When will you restore the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus’ answer is, yet again, not what they expect. It’s not a timeline or a carefully wrought strategy. The followers of Christ are still struggling with their question. They struggle with illusion. They struggle with how to act…

What do we do? Tell us what we’re supposed to do.
Luke, understanding the nature of such a question, responds by encouraging them to ask another question: Who shall we be?

Michel Quoist is one of my favorite poets. A Baptist mystic introduced me to his poetry many years ago. What I love about Quoist is his willingness to encounter God in any context. This is a poem about just such an encounter. This is one way to answer Luke’s preferred question.

“The Subway”

The last ones squeeze in.
The door rolls shut.
The subway rumbles off.
I can't move;
I am no longer an individual but a crowd,
A crowd that moves in one piece like jellied soup in its can.

A nameless and indifferent crowd, probably far from you, Lord.
I am one with the crowd, and I see why it's sometimes hard for
me to rise higher.
The crowd is heavy - leaden soles on my feet, my slow feet - a
crowd too large for my overburdened skiff.
Yet, Lord, I have no right to overlook these people; they are
my brothers,
And I cannot save myself, alone.

from Prayers by Michel Quoist

This is how I understand the nature and identity of the Church.

It is inseparable from the world.
The salvation of everyone in the Church is intrinsically tied
to the salvation of all Humanity.
It is a chaotic, difficult, and slow business.

Being the Church is complicated and messy…
like soup in a can…each of us moving with leaden feet.
Interconnected…none are to be overlooked.

We are not to be distracted by something else, something distant. It is not the nature of Christ, the Kingdom, Heaven, God, or the Holy Spirit to be distant.

Luke wants us to remember that by being the Church
we give witness to Jesus, Immanuel, “God with us”…We find Heaven in our midst.

Luke tells the story about the Ascension twice…in Acts and in his Gospel. And in each, the response is prayer and worship. This prayer and worship, however, is not an escape, but a recognition of God. This was the character of Christ’s prayer and worship. And it was the foundation to every miracle and act of compassion. Christ’s ministry was about proclaiming the Kingdom of God as present…here and now. His ministry was about showing people God. To do this he took the time to be with God, to worship and pray. This was not an effort to escape the world, but to learn to uncover the illusions of the world and to recognize God’s presence in it.

So much of life is about escaping…finding ways to escape pain, uncertainty, and struggle. We surround ourselves with comforts and successes, to do lists and achievements…always looking to that next distant goal. We try to Escape. What Jesus is asking of us, and what Luke understands to be the identity of the Church is the opposite.

We are to dig in. We are to keep people from looking to some Far Off Illusion. For the Kingdom is not there. God is here. With us. First we pray. First we worship. First we learn to escape the illusion that God is anywhere else but with us here and now.

The World shouts, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” It wants us distracted…trying to find some great and powerful Oz...It wants us lost on some yellow brick road.

But Luke knows the truth. He knows that God is here. The Kingdom is with us. We are to be witnesses.

So, escape illusion. Do not look to some far off heaven. But find Heaven here. Now.

Amen.

roger williams is blue like jazz: part, the third

I think my desire to believe in a god other than Jesus had mostly to do with boredom. I wanted something fresh to think about, to believe, to twiddle around in my mind.
- Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz (p. 91)

One of the strains I struggle with in Blue Like Jazz is Miller's own frustration with self-imposed disciplines. At one point he teams up with some other guys who take on this austere lifestyle of prayer, a certain diet, and the study of scripture. Typical of such endeavors, once they all go their separate ways the discipline falters. So true. What Miller does in response, however, is what bothers me. He blames discipline for his failure to find God. He blames boredom.

I must come across at times like some drill sergeant. Discipline! We must have discipline! It's simply not true. I'm the poster child for the INFP-Adult-ADD-has-anyone-seen-my-keys lifestyle. I understand that faith disciplines do not exist to punish us, but to edify us, to help us find God. Not everyone is called to any one spiritual discipline. There are many gifts, says the scriptures. I usually add, "and each has its own set of disciplines." Miller's response to my frustration is found in the quotation above.

Boredom comes. He imagines himself as one of the Jews in the desert with Moses. "Are we there yet?" Yeah, now that's a truism for any discipline. It, like faith in God, is not here to entertain us. Boredom comes. There are times when we simply wander in the desert, unable to follow the same God we were so deeply in love with just last week.

huzzah!!

Enchanted April is Jeff recommended! Wahoo!!
link

ascension: an enchanted april

Blessed are you,
almighty God,
through Jesus Christ the King of glory.
Born of a woman,
he came to our rescue.
Dying for us,
he trampled death and conquered sin.
By the glory of his resurrection
he opened the way to life eternal
and by his ascension,
gave us the sure hope
that where he is we may also be.
For these and all your mercies, we praise you,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit:
Blessed be God for ever!

- oremus.org

Another April comes to a close. May has begun with all of its meteorological ambiguity. Today will be a lovely 70 degree day eventually giving way to cooler and wetter weather. Such is a Chicago spring.

My mother arrived safely yesterday. I picked her up at the airport after visiting with one of the newcomers at the church. It's good to see her. We did a little grocery shopping on our way home picking up opening night goodies for the cast of Enchanted April while we were there. A little "vino" keeps the natives happy. Mother enjoyed the show a great deal. She says that you all should go and see it. Twice. I agree.

I know that at this point in the week I simply have the upcoming sermon on the brain. But the show is an ascension tale. Who knew? How do we stop gazing into some philosophical ideal, some heavenly Kingdom, and turn our attention to the world around us? It is in this way that we actually discover the Kingdom of God. It is in this way that we encounter the resurrection and the blessings of God. The ladies speak of providence or enchantment. And they are right to do so. There is nothing we do exactly...except to do as Luke asks of us in Acts. Look not to the heavens. To find God we must give our whole selves to the people and the world around us completely. We cannot be miserly with our love. Instead we are called to be generous, to be "translated" by God.

In other news:

Trish and I want a scooter. It is an illness, I am sure. Heh. More later. Have a great day.