From the Wilderness

Discontinued

2010-04-07T16:29:00.000-07:00

This blog is discontinued. For more information on Ryon and the United Church of Colchester please see unitedchurchcolchester.org

Faith and Theology: It's a Boy! A Christmas eve homily

2008-12-24T06:02:00.000-08:00

Faith and Theology: It's a Boy! A Christmas eve homily

Read this sermon by Kim Fabricius. I keep reading things by Kim over at Faith and Theology. He is a pastor over in Wales with a prophet's vision and a poet's sword. Just the thing to make your Christmas.

Here's the teaser. . .

Does this little one care about who you are, about your sex, sexuality, politics, or even whether you believe in God, or what God you believe in? No, he reaches out, unquestioningly, to you in your elemental humanity. He wants only your tenderness, moist like cattle breath, warm like straw.

Read the rest.

I'm Going to Walk: An Advent Meditation on Strong, Dark-Skinned Mothers-To-Be

2008-12-17T12:20:00.000-08:00

When Irie gave birth to our daughter we showed up at the hospital, parked in the garage as practiced, and then rode up the elevator to the main floor. Irie's contractions were monster, so the walk was very slow, and very painful.

When we reached the main floor lobby a dozen plus wheelchairs sat in dereliction at the front door. I told Irie I was going to grab one, but she refused. "No, I'm going to walk," she said. We continued across the floor, each small step revealing just how far we had to go. We were caught in Zeno's paradox. How could we ever get to the maternity floor if an infinite number of lesser points stood in our way?

And - and this is what really peeved me - why was the maternity ward on the third floor anyway?

We had now come to tortoise speed. And not just any tortoise, but clawed-foot tortoise - chryogenically frozen - and stuck in L.A. traffic - speed. I felt people's eyes. They could not bear to look at Irie. So they were looking at me. I knew what they were thinking. I was thinking it too. "Why don't you get that woman a wheelchair you idiot first-time dad?"

But still, Irie protested. "No. I'm going to walk."

I tell all this because I've been thinking of why it was that Mary was in Bethlehem.

We know the story. "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. . ." And so Joseph went from Galilee to Judea to the city of David. And Mary, who was great with child, went with him.

I've always read the fact that Mary went with Joseph as a sign of the callousness of Caesar's census. And no doubt Caesar and his policies were indeed cruelly callous.

But my experience with Irie has me wondering if perhaps Mary went with her husband, not because she had to, but because she chose too.

I am wondering if maybe Mary decided to stand up and walk because she belonged to that long line of strong dark-skinned women who - the midwives stingingly told Pharaoh - "are not like the Egyptian women, but are vigorous in child birth."

And I wonder if she got up and walked to Bethlehem because she was about to have a boy born beneath the jackboot of empire. So she wanted to teach him a lesson about what it means to stay human in the face of oppression.

I'm wondering all these things. And if they are true then I have to draw one more conclusion.

That Jesus learned his lesson from his momma. And that's where he got his teaching. "If the Roman Empire asks you to go one mile, go also a second."

Go as far as it takes to show Caesar that he may take your name, your date, your tribe, your land, and even your time, but he cannot take your dignity.

Advent Proclamation

2008-12-16T13:05:00.000-08:00

The water has broken
The midwife is awash in the virgin's womb
She can see the crown now
A human head adorning God's heart
This is the moment of terror
A race with time

Panic seizes the midwife
She shouts, she screams
But her cries make no difference
It is a gospel of straw
The child will be lost
Caught up with the multitudes
Only St. Matthew remembers
Rachel weeping for her children
She refused to be consoled
The midwife weeping for wisdom
They are no more

Silence

Three days in hell
Without hope and God in the world

And then the miracle
The Word breaks forth
It pieces the silence
In kicks and fits with groans too deep
The child is born

Hallelujah!

Annunciation

2008-12-14T21:36:00.000-08:00

I'm in the thick of reading and re-reading the Annunciation and Nativity accounts. At this time of year a preacher pretty much feels like she or he is living in a perpetual Nativity drama. "In the days of the emporer Augustus. . ." keeps spinning around in my head.

Compounding things is the fact that I checked out James Earl Jones Reads the King James Version of the Bible from my local library. Yes, Darth Vader reads the KJV. As I drive around I can't help but think I may actually hear him say, "And now a reading from the 1st chapter of the Book of Luke, I am your father."

Anyway, as I've been reading and listening to the Annuciation account, I noticed that after Mary asks how it might be that she could give birth without knowing a man the angel Gabriel replies by saying that nothing is impossible with God.

What is interesting is that this is the same thing Jesus says much later on when talking about a rich man getting into heaven. "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. . . For man it is impossible, but with God nothing is impossible."

The annunciation brings startling good news: If God canpush a child through the eye of a virgin's womb, then God can likewise push even the most unlikely of us through the gates of heaven.

Another Fold

2008-12-10T19:22:00.000-08:00

I let someone go from the church the other day. Not an employee. A parishioner. And a friend.

We met in a coffee shop and she began asking about ways that she can get more involved in church.

But that wasn't what she really needed. What she really needed was permission to leave.

She lives downtown. She has intentionally chosen to live in the poorest neighborhood in Burlington so she can love on and serve the residents there. She lives there so she can be the presence of Christ there. In order to fully live out her calling she needs not only to live there, but she needs to - must - worship there as well. It is obvious that our bedroom community church wasn't right for her.

What amazes me though is how long it took for us to see the obvious. Or, more accurately, how long it took for us to say it. For me to say it.

I want our church to be able to meet the needs of everyone. In the end, however, trying to be all things to all people is a prescription both for schizophrenia in the short-term and heartbreak in the long.

A church must learn to be what it is. A pastor must learn to be what he or she is. We all must learn to be ourselves. If we try to be anything else ultimately it will destroy us. The wineskin will burst.

When I finally did say it - "Don't you think you should go to church downtown" - there was a sudden release for us both. The relationship suddenly seemed much more authentic. The pressure was off. The truth had set us both free.

After she left I sat in the coffee shop for a long while. I knew that what had just happened was for the best. I had given the best pastoral advice I could give and she had taken it. It was the right thing. Yet I was heavy of heart. Sorrowful even.

And then these words from Jesus came over me as a soothing balm, "I have other sheep that don't belong to this fold."

May the shepherd lead you to your rightful fold, my friend.

What We Can Learn From the Wal-Mart Death

2008-12-05T05:43:00.000-08:00

Ethicsdaily is running an op-ed I wrote about last week's death of Wal-Mart employe Jdimytai Damour. I'm posting the piece here with their permission.

By now we have all heard about the Wal-Mart employee in Long Island who was trampled to death in last week's Black Friday shopping stampede.

That employee was Jdimytai Damour. He was a temporary worker and had been employed by Wal-Mart for only a week. He was 34.

Mr. Damour's death reveals an underside to not only Black Friday and the whole Christmas shopping season, but to the way we buy, barter, trade and live more generally. Mr. Damour's death is a single, shocking glance at the incalcuable cost of always low prices.

Incalcuable because we don't really know how many more Jdimytai Damours have been trampled by the force of a disconnected trade system. My farming friends here in Vermont have a saying: "Know your farmer, love your farmer."

But the truth is most of us don't know who milked the cows today that we will drink from tomorrow. Nor do we know who cuts the cane for our sugar or picks the bananas for our lunchboxes or sews the shoes for our feet. We have no idea whether they are making a fair wage or—like Mr. Damour—being left exposed to the cruel forces of consumption.

So, in reality, we're a lot like the folks at the back of that Wal-Mart line. We have no idea who's up there ahead of us. We can't see who's being crushed by the weight of our wants. All we know is that there's a sale and the doors are now open.

In Jesus' day a grand tower in Jerusalem fell, crushing 18 people to death. There was a lot of talk about what happened and what it meant. Jesus interpreted it as a warning. He said: "Do you think those 18 were worse sinners than all the others of Jerusalem? No. But I tell you, unless you repent you will all perish just the same."

What happened in Long Island should come as a warning to us all. None of us is guiltier than anyone else. We're all implicated in this myth of no-consequence consumption.

It is time we repent, lest we all be crushed in the stampede.

Thanksgiving Ecumenical Service

2008-11-23T18:10:00.001-08:00

I just returned from our annual Colchester Ecumenical Thanksgiving Service.

Tonight we gathered as Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians, and Congregationalists and did the one thing all Christians should be able to do together. We said thank you to God.

Every year I tell my congregation that the ecumenical service is no small thing. As I said when I preached the service two years ago, our forebears would not have liked what we are doing. The vileness that was embedded in the Reformation and responses to it persisted well into the first half of the last century.

But we live in a new world today. Our forebears might not have liked it, but I do believe God does.

I think we as Christians need more of these kinds of ecumenical encounters. We need them because it helps us to see that Christ is working in and through the ministries of other churches and other traditions. Our real enemies are not those with divergent ecclesiologies or atonement theories.

The church's true enemy in the 21st century is a dehumanizing secularism that sees self-gratification as the summum bonum and will thererfore exploit, consume, annihilate, or subject any person or nation that stands in the way.

An old - but still fresh - word helps keep everything in perspective: "Those who are not against us are for us."

Besides, I just like the whole ecumenical service affair. It's half super formal with collars, and genuflects, and responsive prayers and half low-brow Baptist with me in my dapper tweed asking God all impromptu like to bless the canned foods that have been brought forward in a recycling bin.

And I hear Jesus' prayer to the Father, "That they might be one as we are one."

Amen to that.

2008-11-22T20:21:00.000-08:00

Burlington Hunger Banquet
Poverty and hunger are for the most part out of sight and therefore out of mind for most of us.

This holiday season, however, I have been invited to attend an event that promises to call our attention to the injustice of the world and challenge us to do something about it.

My friends at the Oxfam Action-Corps is bringing a number of Vermont's leading anti-poverty and ant-hunger advocates together for an Oxfam Hunger Banquet.

The banquet will include stories, singing, and a meal designed to simulate the real life conditions of disparity separarating the world's richest and poorest populations.

WARNING: You may not get your fair share!

The skinny:

Date: Saturday, December 6th Time:
Time: 6:00 – 7:30 pm
Location: McClure Multigenerational Center 241 North Winooski Ave.
Burlington, VT

Speakers:

Hal Colston of NeighborKeepers
Joanne Heidkamp of the VT Campaign to End Childhood Hunger
Alex Pial of the Visiting Nurse Association

This event is FREE and promises to be an empowering experience facilitated by community leaders advocating on behalf of the poor and vulnerable communities here in Vermont as well as in the developing world.

You are invited too.

Playing the Wrong Game

2008-11-15T20:16:00.000-08:00

Like a lot of you I grew up playing Monopoly with my family on the living room floor. I remember I always wanted to be the Race Car. And I treated the game just like it was a race car game. I sped off and did my best to make it around that little square track as fast as I could, not slowing down to miss a beat. Ninety-to nothing I was in my car and I was out to collect my $200 for passing Go! My mother was the banker. “Reading Railroad, do you want to buy it?” “No.” Pass Go! Collect $200. “St. Charles Place, do you want to buy it.” “No.” Pass Go! collect $200. Yes! Boardwalk, Fifth Avenue? No. Just give me my $200. While I was speeding my race car around the board my dad was busy being the Top Hat. The ultimate symbol of a Monopoly baron. St. Charles. Yes, I’ll buy that. New York Avenue. Why yes, I’ll buy that also. Boardwalk, Park Place. Yes, I’ll buy those too. Thirty minutes into the game I’m rolling in the dough and my dad is almost broke.

And then I land on my first house. And then the second house. And then the hotel. “Let’s see,” my mom says, “Boardwalk with two hotels and nine houses and a couple of horses and a Jacuzzi out back. Yes, Ryon will also be needing a $700 billion bailout.” I look up at my dad. He’s standing over me in a top hat in the middle of the living room jumping up and down on my little race car shattering it into pieces.

When I was in divinity school I did a summer internship in an inner-city ministry and made friends with a 13-year-old kid named Alvin. Alvin’s father was in jail for killing his mother and Alvin himself was on the margins. His life was at a critical point. He could go one way or he could go the other. I was glad to be there at that critical time to befriend him and to help steer him in the right direction.

Then my internship was over. I went back to the Gothic Wonderland of Duke. I was just a couple of blocks away from Alvin’s house, but I was a world away from his life. Yet Alvin kept showing up. I was a Resident Assistant on campus and I kept finding Alvin roaming the halls of my dormitory. I would come home from school and there Alvin would be, hanging out beside my door. I mean he was desperate for a friendship.

But I was too busy. I was too busy studying theology. I was too busy plunging the depths of God’s mind. I was too busy trying to make the grade. I didn’t have the time for an interruption like Alvin.

I was driven by fear that Alvin was going to ruin my nice, orchestrated life. Do you see? I was being the Race Car again. I was playing the wrong game again. I had gone to seminary to learn about God and instead I was settling for a theological education.

And I risked a 13-year-old boy’s life while I was at it.

Mighty Waters

2008-11-11T19:20:00.000-08:00

As of this writing it has been exactly one week since it was announced that Senator Barack Obama had been elected the next president of the United States. What followed that announcement was an act of ritual cleansing - for our nation and for me also.

When President-Elect Obama and his family walked out onto the stage there at Grant Park black America wept. My father-in-law, who grew up the son of a preacher on Sweet Auburn beneath the shadow of Martin Luther King's Ebenezer Baptist Church, wept. My wife, who grew up in the outcrops of a racially-divided Old South bastion, wept. Jesse Jackson wept. Colin Powell wept. All black America wept.

We saw their tears blazoned across America's television screens. Tears of joy, yes. But more than joy; tears of jubilee.

Those enough close enough could hear the tears as they fell. It was the sound of mighty waters. The sound of a 40 million member chorus, singing through the lump in their throats: I, Too, Sing America.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. compared last Tuesday night to the night Joe Lewis beat Max Schmeling for the Heavyweight Championship of the World. A "magical" and "transformative" moment in African-American history which marks a point when we all know nothing will ever be the same again.

But it was more than that too. When Max Schmeling fell to Joe Louis only the black people of America cheered. As Jimmy Carter tells in his memoir, the black sharecroppers on his daddy's farm listened to the fight on the radio from outside the Carter home. When Louis knocked out Schmeling in the first round there was not a peep from anybody. The black families walked back across the lot to their own homes in silence and shut the door. It wasn't until that door was opened that Carter heard what he described as the sound of all hell breaking loose.

Last Tuesday was different from that. It wasn't just a transformative moment for African-American history. It was a transformative moment for American history. Not only blacks shed tears. Whites did too. And not behind closed doors. The doors were open. The tears were public. Colorless.

Even those who voted for Senator Obama's opponent shared in the momentousness of the night. They echoed the graciousness of Senator John McCain in celebrating the fact that "America today is a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry" of its past.

As I reflected on Senator McCain's words I realized that I too am a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry of my own past. When I was a boy I shuttered at the thought of a black family living in my neighborhood. Now a black family will soon be living in the White House. The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The stone I rejected has become my president.

I thank God for all of this. Not for Barack Obama having been elected so much, but for America having been "ready" to elect a black person president.

After the long procession of civil rights marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus bridge in 1965 and made their way to State Capitol Building in Montgomery, Alabama King preached a sermon from the capitol steps popularly known as the "How Long? Not Long" speech. "How long?" Dr. King asked in a series of litanies. "Not long," the response each time.

On January 20 that procession will make its last leg to Washington, DC where a new litany will be heard echoed from the steps of our nation's capitol.

"How long?"

"Now."

Risky Business

2008-11-10T18:41:00.000-08:00

I don't usually blog about stuff I'm going to preach on soon. Blogging and preaching are two separate exercises for me - though they do seem shape and refine each other like two measures shaken together and then running over.

Nevertheless I'm sharing something here that I'll share again Sunday. We'll be talking about risky faith and this is a story from our congregation I wanted to share.

We have a deacon at our church and whose phone number is on our church answering machine. If no one is at church and someone is having an emergency they can call her house for help.

You would not believe the kind of calls she gets. The other day some lady called and asked, “Is the owner of the church in, or is he napping?” I told our deacon she should have put her husband on the phone. “Yeah - ahh - this is Jesus; I was napping on the pillow down deck in the houseboat. How can I help you.” (If you don't get that read Mark 4.)

Anyway, back in August our deacon gets a call from a lady looking for someone to do a memorial service for someone in the family who had just passed away. “I’m sure we can get somebody to help you,” our deacon said. “When is the memorial service going to take place?” “Oh, in about an hour.”

You read that right. An hour. Sixty minutes.

Our decaon gave that woman some scriptures to read and told the woman that she would try to call the minister. And then something really cool happened; our deacon decided that if she couldn’t get hold of me, she was just going to go over there herself and read scripture.

You gotta love that. No theological education. No seminary degree. Just a woman who loves God and is compassionate toward people and couldn't stand the thought of a family not hearing words of comfort on a dark day.

Risky faith.

I love it.

A Hand for Richard Land

2008-11-07T09:07:00.000-08:00

I want to thank Richard Land for graciously congratulating Barack Obama on his election and for his spot-on comments about how more proactive pro-life policymaking can help create create common ground among the Left and Right.

Here is the link.

Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, calls for President-Elect Obama to support the Democrats for Life initiative known as the Pregnant Women Support Act which, if passed, would offer pregnant and parenting women increased assistance for things like child care and health insurance to low-income and student parents, and tax credits for adoptive parents.

I don't know if Senator Obama already supports this legislation. It seems like this is the kind of legislation that would be in keeping with his post-divisive political promise.

Personally, I think we need to make every effort to make choosing life a real option. That's why I am proud that my church works with Christian ministries like Carenet Pregnancy Center here in Burlington.

Women - and men - facing unexpected pregnancies need all the help they can get. That help comes not only at the point of making a decision about whether or not to terminate the pregnancy; but also long-term help.

In essence, they need community.

Legislation out of Washington can't provide that (churches and synagogues and families can). Nevertheless, this bill is a start. It has us thinking in practical terms about a matter of ultimate importance - how to help make life more livable.

I do hope Senator Obama will support it when he becomes president.

Prayers for President-Elect Obama

2008-11-04T20:41:00.001-08:00

The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

A black American has been elected president.

Tonight I sat with my daughter asleep in my arms and listened to John Lewis, that great American civil rights leader and Georgian congressman. Congressman Lewis said that what we have witnessed tonight is another page in the nonviolent revolution that began in Montgomery in 1955.

Whatever your political leanings, let us all tonight rejoice that America is a better place than it was a half century ago. And for that we give thanks to all those who learned to turn the other cheek from Congressman Lewis who learned it from Rev. James Lawson, who learned it from Martin Luther King, Jr., who learned it from Ghandi, who learned it from Jesus.

Tavis Smiley was on NBC tonight. His prayer for Barack Obama is my prayer also. May President-elect Obama deal effectively with the pressures of now being a global icon and may he never lose his soul.

Congratulations Senator Obama.

An Election Day Story

2008-11-03T19:29:00.000-08:00

On this election day it is reasonable to expect a pastor would say something about the presidential election. Probably a short homily about how it is important to do our civic duty and not get too out of shape if our candidate doesn't win because in the end Christ is Lord!

Words of wisdom for sure.

If you are looking for something like that I suggest you visit Jim Somerville's blog entry How Would Jesus Vote? Jim is pastor of First Baptist Richmond, VA and his pastoral sensibilities and thought-provoking words far outdo anything I could offer. So, rather than cribbing from Jim I say just go read his blog.

Instead, I offer you a brief picture of the kingdom of God:

Today, while millions of Americans were lining up to vote in this historic election, I went to see a dear friend in a nursing home.

When I arrived I discovered she wasn't in her room. She was in the community room, watching TV. I walked in and could see her from behind. Beyond her were the faces of Fred and LaMonte Sanford who were duking it out about something on the rerun channel.

I pulled up a chair next to my friend, set down and said hi. My movement stirred a number of the other residents from slumber. One smiled. Another frowned. One asked for help. Then they all fell back to sleep.

It didn't take me long to realize that my friend did not have her hearing aides in. Perhaps it was best as Fred was saying some pretty terrible things about LeMonte and his friend from Puerto Rico. So instead of talking, we just sat there. Me caressing my friends arm which was dressed in an old red sweater and perched on the arm of her wheelchair.

A few minutes went by and then I reached down and lifted a couple of items out of bag that I had sitting between my feet.

"The body of Jesus," my friend said.

"Yes," I said with unexpected tears rushing up to my eyes, "the body of Jesus."

So right there, in the midst of all her sleeping neighbors and with the pugilism of Sanford and son going at one another's throats, my friend and I shared the Lord's Supper.

St. Luke begins his account of the kingdom of God movement with a litany of titles and reigns: "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar - when Pontius Pilate was govrenor of Judea, Herod tetrach of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrach of Iturea and Troconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene - during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas. . ." In the midst of all these governments, and figures, and actors on the center stage of history, then Luke says. . .

"The word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert."

And so it is, in the midst of this historic election and all its stars and mega-stars, the word of God still comes in the desert - in nursing homes, and orphanages, and little hole in the wall community centers. The word still comes and gives life.

And no matter who wins this election today, the word of God will do the same thing tomorrow.

I pray.

Ryon

Time and Tide

2008-11-01T19:12:00.000-07:00

I spent last weekend with my family at the Nausett lightkeeper's house at Nauset Beach in Cape Cod. A friend of ours who owns the house was very generous in letting us stay at that special home.

I could hardly believe the wind and waves. Nature is having its way with Nauset Beach. The original five acre plot the light was on is now down to only three and a half acres. The sea is washing away three feet of land a year on average. Evidently Cape Cod as a whole is literally falling into the sea.

In the mid-nineties, after ten feet of beach was lost in three successive years, both the lighthouse and the lighkeepers house were moved to higher ground for what must have been an altogether mind-boggling price.

All of this makes the home we stayed at an especially powerful place to stay. Generations of people have fought to keep the light and the lightkeeper's house alive. And it still stands, a beacon in the night.

On the morning we left for the coast I went and visited the oldest member of our congregation. He is nearly 96. "You can live to be a 100," he said as we sat together at his breakfast table, "but even if you do life is still too short." The whole time I was on the Cape I couldn't help but think that those words and the whole story of the Nausett Beach Light were somehow interlinked. We are alive today and perhaps tomorrow but as the psalms say, "Man's life is but a puff." In the end time and tide will have there way.

Yet somehow the effort is worth it. To be alive today is worth it. To be a light in the midst of the darkness right here and right now is enough.

There is a lightkeeper's inn log, less romantically known as a guest book, in the house. Entries date back for decades. In my entry I included my favorite poem, of unknown authorship but first passed on to me by that great African American mystic and churchman Howard Thurman. I thought the words were apt.

The Struggle
You say the little efforts I make
Will do no good
They never will prevail
To tip the hovering scale
Justice keeps in balance
I didn't say I ever thought they would
But I am prejudiced beyond debate
In favor of my right to choose
Which side shall feel
The stubborn ounces of my weight

Joe Six Pack the Plumber

2008-10-23T20:51:00.000-07:00

As part of my vocational practice discipline I am reading Eugene Peterson's reflection on the pastoral call Under the Unpredictable Plant. Eugene Peterson is the guy who translated The Message version of the Bible. I have long been amazed by the keenness of his insights into scripture. Under the Unpredictable Plant has proved that he has the read on my soul also.

Peterson says that as pastors we shouldn't buy into the veneer our parishioners often present. An example comes to mind. I'll call him - because its fun - Joe Six Pack the Plumber. On the surface Joe's life doesn't exactly ooze spirituality. He's pretty irregular on Sundays. His wife was his live-in girlfriend for a couple of years before they got married. He knows everything about Nascar, but next to nothing about the Bible.

We see in parishioners like Joe a soulless world where, as Peterson says, all "spirit [seems] to have leaked out . . . and been replaced by a garage-sale clutter of cliches and stereotypes, securities and fashions." In short, we pastors see that we are surrounded by shallow lives.

The problem, Peterson says, is that this is all most pastors see. We allow ourselves to get tricked by the visible and end up missing the remarkably disturbing truth that God is infinitely interested in each and every one of these folks.

I suppose that is the radically upsetting meaning of this idea of a Jesus who was born in a barn and raised in a little town no bigger than Muleshoe, Texas. Joe Six Pack the Plumber has a soul afterall. The task of the pastor is to pay close and long enough attention to notice it and help it grow.

John Claypool liked to tell a story about a child who watched as a crane delivered a giant granite block to the downtown square of his hometown. For months the boy passed by that granite block and wondered at what the craftsman was doing behind the curtain. Finally the work was complete and the curtain was pulled back. Incredulou the child asked the artist, "How did you know that Mr. Lincoln was trapped inside that block?"

The task of the pastor in this "art of arts" is to see what God sees buried inside of the people we encounter and then call it out.

Art of Arts

2008-10-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

I have committed to start practicing being a pastor more faithfully. And as any good piano player will tell you, with practice comes - not perfection - but sacrifice. Numerous "outside" engagements and opportunities - all good - are always knocking on a pastor's door. So and so needs this. This organization would like help with that. The list is never ending; and toxic

A couple of thing things in recent months have suggested that it is vital to my spiritual life and the spiritual life of my church that I take Jesus' words as my own - "Get away from me Satan."

So in practicing the pastoral role I'm working on some spiritual exercises. I'm going to visit more. I know, its quaint, but its the purest form of ministry I of. Besides, I can't turn water into wine.

Secondly, I'm going to blog more. And I am going to blog about pastoring more. Writing helps me preach and pastor better. And it brings me joy.

Third, I'm going to read less and more. I'm going to read less junk. Less fly by night blogs and more spiritual classics. You have permission to do the same, which I recognize means you might never read another thing I write. I'm okay with that if you are.

The first spiritual classic I am reading is Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care - appropriate enough for a person trying to practice being a better pastor.

In the first chapter Gregory brings gravity to the office of pastoring by calling it the "art of arts." In fact, the whole quote exhorts even more powerfully:

With what rashness, then, would the pastoral office be undertaken by the unfit, seeing that the government of souls is the art of arts!

I've been thinking about what that means. Pastoring - the art of arts. Here's what I've come up with. The ancient philosophers called wisdom the "virtue of virtues." Wisdom was what enabled one to recognize all the other virtues. It was what enabled one to discern courage, not only from cowardice, but - more expertly - from bravado.

I am thinking then that pastoring is the art of arts because it is the art of being able to discern the artist in others. Good pastoring is the artful ability of cultivating and calling forth the artist from within the soul of others. In essence, it is the ability to see what and who God has created these persons around us to be and then to help them see it too.

You can't do that with only one hand on the wheel.

A final story that is scaring the devil out of me - literally. I read it in Leviticus with Irie the other day. (Yeah, we're reading Old Testament to each other at night. Some read love poems, we read Leviticus.)

The LORD went to great lengths to make clear all the mandates that a priest should follow in making atonement for the people. Cut the lamb this way. Fling the blood on the altar that way. Strike the fire like this. You get the point. Well, it seems that Aaron's two sons didn't pay strict enough attention. They offered up a fire to the LORD in the wrong way. They were killed for it. Harsh. Way harsh, but the penalty for offering an "unholy fire" to the LORD.

LORD, give me the diligence to serve you well. Give me the strength to discern. The courage to say no. Give me the eyes to see and cultivate what you have created in these people you have charged me with. And, most of all, may the fire I offer up to you always be holy as I practice this art of arts. Amen.

VIA Gubernatorial Forum

2008-10-14T11:34:00.001-07:00

I want to give a big shout out (ha!) to my friend Debbie Ingram with the Vermont Interfaith Action. VIA has managed to get all three major contenders for this year's gubernatorial race to participate in a forum on VIA's core issues of affordable housing, access to health care, and opportunities for youth.

That's right, Debbie Ingram . . . the Rick Warren of Vermont.

The forum will take place at the October 27 at 7pm at the College Street Congregational Church in Burlington. Gov. Jim Douglas, Anthony Pollina, and Rep. Gaye Symington will all participate.

I'm impressed with what VIA is doing. They have managed to bring together a theologically diverse group of faith communities - including a Jewish synagogue, a Unitarian congregation, and a couple of Catholic churches - to work on solving some shared problems.

The faith community has a vocational mandate to speak to the major issues of our time. In this increasingly secular age our voice is being drowned out. But VIA is showing us that if people of faith speak with one voice then they will be heard over the din.

A good example - Affordable Housing. As part of an agreement with the City of Burlington, a local development was mandated to provide a minimum number of affordable homes. But apparently the practice of some developers is to simply skip out on that mandate and pay the corresponding fine.

VIA blew the whistle on that practice, saying, "That may be technically legal but, hay, don't be a ninny." Or something like that anyway.

Congratulations VIA. Keep up the good work.

This post amended from the original post. Thanks Morgan.

Georgia Baptists

2008-10-11T23:47:00.000-07:00

Most of the time when you mention Georgia Baptists people think of Jimmy Carter or Charles Stanley.

I'm posting a link to a conversation with another Georgia Baptist however - Archbishop Malkhaz Songulashvili, from the Evangelical Baptist Church of the Republic of Georgia.

I've mentioned the Republic of Georgia in my last two articles. I want people to know about the courageous witness of Baptists there. When I heard this interview last month I thought to myself: Deitrich Bonhoeffer.

Take the time to listen to this interview. The church continues to witness for hope in the midst of Babylon's terror.

Malkhaz Songulashvili inteview

Nagasaki Vigil

2008-10-11T23:32:00.000-07:00

This summer I attended the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America's annual summer conference. I was challenged there by my brothers and sisters in Christ to take a more active role in speaking out against the terror of nuclear weapons. In response I attended a vigil commemorating the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9. I wrote about my experience at the vigil for the September issue of the Vermont Peace & Justice Center's September newsletter. I've posted a link to the newsletter, but the whole text of my article is below.

Article Link

On Saturday, August 9th I stood with some fifty others to commemorate the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki sixty-three years ago. Each year, the brothers and sisters of Pax Christi Burlington gather beneath the bell tower of the former Immaculate Conception Cathedral and remember the thousands of lives lost in Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 and Hiroshima three days earlier. Each year they gather to honor those lives and pray for a world without atomic weapons.

The bell tower proved a fitting place. The sole standing artifact after an arsonist's torch destroyed the rest of the church, the bell tower remains a perfect picture of the destruction a world with much science but no soul can wreak.

Pax Christi is a Catholic organization. Pax Christi being latin for "Peace of Christ". Yet not only Catholics were present. I am Baptist. Jews and Muslims and a whole cadre of Buddhist drummers showed up also as well. There were also blacks and whites and browns. And there were children.

And I suppose that is why we all came. We came for the sake of the children. We came to bear witness to the truth, that when the powers of this world perpetrate acts of aggression and vengence, it is the children who suffer most.

Even as we vigiled the powers of this world were at work again. In what has the potential to escalate into the first act of a new Cold War, Russia was bombing Georgia. Nuclear-armed Russia was flexing its muscles and just daring the rest of the international community to say anything.

Near the end of the vigil an old nun said something. Not so much in words, but in presence. Her body tired and beaten down by many years of life and service, she needed assistance getting from the car into her wheelchair. She was late. She was late, but she had come. She had come to give her body, enfeebled as it is, to the future of this world and the future of its children.

O that we all might do the same.

Apocalypse Now

2008-10-03T20:05:00.000-07:00

I was interviewed this week by a college student doing a film on somebody's interpretion of the book of Revelation. I'm not going to do this somebody the honor of posting a link or even giving the name; but guess what, this somebody has done all the right calculating and it seems that 666 is a code for China.

It's as clear as mud.

I said in the interview that trying to squeeze John's apocalyptic vision into our exact world circumstances is a lot like me thinking that Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son is about my friend in Plattsburgh who has two sons. One's a good boy. The other's a mess. The mess went off to Vegas and gambled his money away and then came back groveling. And upon his return my friend gave his son his Cadillac. Well, obviously Jesus was talking about my buddy in Plattsburgh.

Him and billions of others like him.

The book of Revelation is less about predicting than it is about describing. It describes the nature of the church's struggle against the powers and principalities of the world for every generation - whether for the first or century church as it suffered beneath the terror of Rome, or for the Confessing Church in 1930s Germany as it spoke out against Hitler, or for the Baptist Church of the Republic of Georgia as it struggles against the cruelty of Russian oppression at this very hour.

And what the book of Revelation has to say to each of these contexts is always the same: Do not grow weary; for in the end the peaceful and just cause of our Lord Jesus Christ wins out. Good triumphs over evil.

The Word of God is dynamically alive; therefore it has something meaningful to say to every generation. Let us stop pretending it speaks only to us right now, and recognize it speaks to all of us all the time.

Sermon 8-24-2008

2008-08-25T11:59:00.000-07:00

Drawn Out
Rev. Ryon Price
United Church of Colchester
August 24, 2008

We are beginning today the first of a nine part series on the book of Exodus. That seems a little daunting for me to preach nine straight Sundays from one book. And I can only imagine it may seem a little daunting for you to sit and listen to nine straight sermons also. But it has just this week been called to my attention that in one year Johan Calvin preached 159 sermons on the book of Job. That’s three plus sermons a Sunday. So maybe we can tolerate just nine.

Over these nine weeks we will follow the Hebrew people as they exodus out from under the yoke of Pharaoh and into the land of Canaan. And, in that story of deliverance we will seek to find our own stories as well.

But first, before we journey out of Egypt we need to remember how it is that the Hebrew people got here in the first place.

The Hebrews were the descendants of a man named Abraham who was called by God, and told that he would be the father of many nations. Abraham had a son Isaac and Isaac had a son Jacob and Jacob had twelve sons. And among the twelve brothers was one named Joseph who was a “dreamer”. And you all know how dreamers are. They drive the IBM engineers in the church mad, because they always have their heads in the clouds but can’t ever seem to come up with anything practical. So the other brothers, constantly annoyed by this dreamer, decide to sell Joseph off into slavery — a scheme which makes me think some of the characters in my own family aren’t quite so bad.

Joseph is sold into slavery and brought to the land of Egypt. Now here in Egypt Joseph’s gift for dreaming actually comes in handy. Having gained the ear of Pharaoh, Joseph prophesies that a famine is coming. He warns Pharaoh to start stockpiling surplus grains. When the famine hits scores of peoples from far and wide come to Egypt in search of help. Egypt gains great wealth and Joseph great honor.

And, as God would have it, among those who come to Egypt in search of food come Joseph’s own brothers, the very ones who had sold him of into slavery. Now my sister Brooke is here today. I wonder, Brooke, what do you think your brother’s reaction to this groveling would have been? But Joseph acts magnanimously. He forgives his brothers. And in a statement which well summarizes the entire first book of the Bible and perhaps all the scriptures, Joseph says to them, “You meant this for evil, but God has meant it for good.”

And with that the whole clan of Jacob’s children comes to live in Egypt under the favor of Pharaoh.

But as the second book of the Bible, Exodus, opens several generations have passed. There is a new Pharaoh now. And this new Pharaoh knows nothing of Joseph. All this new Pharaoh knows is that the Hebrew people are having babies left and right. Out of xenophobic fear this new Pharaoh decides to put an end to the Hebrew line. He tells the two Hebrew midwives, Shiprah and Puah, to go on caring for any Hebrew girls born. But, he says, “If it be a boy then you must kill the child.”

What do you do when a new Pharoah is in Egypt?

Reynolds Price has been one of the most acclaimed professors at Duke University for decades. A writer by trade, and a man of great Christian faith. In 1984 he was diagnosed with a large malignant tumor at the base of his spinal cord. Surgery and radiation ensued. Reynolds Price’s cancer was beaten back, but Reynolds Price the man was left confined to a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waste down. The whole world as he knew it had been changed.

Reflecting on his life in a later book Reynolds wrote, “The kindest thing anyone could have done for me once I finished five weeks of radiation would have been to look me square in the eye and say clearly, “Reynolds Price is dead. Who will you be now?”

A relationship has ended. A job has been lost. Cancer has changed everything. The good times are over; things are from here on out going to be much more difficult. There is a new Pharaoh in Egypt. Your old life is dead. Who will you be now?

Shiprah and Puah, these two Hebrew midwives, they have decided who they are going to be. They have decided that they are going to fear God more than they fear Pharaoh. They report back to Pharaoh and tell him the task he has given them is just too impossible. I would have loved to have been there to see Pharaoh’s blood boil when they told him, “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women. They are so strong. They have their babies before we can even get there.”

These two courageous souls and not going to cower to the dictates of Pharaoh. They too are strong — strong like the black maid of Montgomery, Alabama Maya Angelou tells about in her autobiography. For forty years she worked in the same white lady’s home, first doing laundry, then keeping house, and finally looking after the children and then later on the grandchildren. The Montgomery Bus Boycotts began, and black people said they would rather walk than ride the buses if they couldn’t ride up front. And the woman’s boss lady wanted to know if her maid would be participating in the boycotts. “Oh no,” she said, “I’m not going to get involved with any bus boycotts. That’s just asking for trouble; and I’m not looking for trouble. No way, I’m going to stay far away from those bus boycotts. In fact, I’m just going to walk wherever I need to go.”

But the charade doesn’t last forever. Pharaoh decides to take a more aggressive approach. He now orders all the people of Egypt into complicity in the extermination. “All Hebrew boys,” he commands, “must be drowned in the Nile River.”

And so it comes down to this. A young Hebrew woman with her three-month old baby boy in her arms on the banks of the Nile. For nine months she nurtured this child in the womb. She jumped the first time he kicked. Giggled the first time he hiccupped. She cried the first time she heard his lungs cry out with life. And for three months she has hidden him away, holding him, muffling his cries in the middle of the night.

And she held tight. For the sake of love she held tight. Even though she knew it wouldn’t last forever, she held very tight.

Some of you will remember the heart-warming and heart-wrenching movie Brian’s Song, a story about two rookie running backs, Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo, on the 1965 Chicago Bears football team. The two made headlines as the first black and white roommates in professional football. We watched Brian’s Song as a school when I was in eighth grade. And to this very day I can still remember the heaviness that fell over me there in the assembly hall of Ed Irons Jr. High School when the movie began with that startling opening line: “Ernest Hemingway said that every true story ends in death. This is a true story.”

All our stories will end in death. We will have to say goodbye. And yet, like this child’s mother, we choose right now to love nonetheless.

I remember the first time I had to help a family say goodbye to a child. I was up late. Distraught over my pastoral charge. What does one say in the face of such pain and loss? As I fretted, Irie came and set down in my lap and she gave me the words. “Hold me,” she said, “hold me like you have all the time in the world.”

That’s right. We hold each other. We cling to each other. We love each other as if we had all the time in the world — because the fact is we don’t.

So wives love your husbands. Husbands love your wives. Parents love your children. Hold them tight while you can. And when it is time to say goodbye, whether for college or forever, know what this Hebrew momma knew and what Tennyson knew also:

‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than not to have loved at all

She bundles the child tight and places him into a small basket that she has covered with tar and pitch. She places that basket into the reeds along the banks of the Nile. She blesses him with words of shalom and turns and runs away. And tears run also. Down her cheeks, and his.

And — again — as God would have it, the daughter of Pharaoh just so happens to be down there bathing in the river. She hears the baby boy’s cries and she knows. “This must be one of the Hebrew’s children,” she says. And there too hidden behind the reeds is the little boy’s sister, who knows just the Hebrew woman who could nurse this baby boy back to health. And here is the real kicker — she gets paid to do it. Paid to be his momma again. How bout that.

This story is an ancient one. Four thousand plus years old. But it’s a modern story also. We live in a dangerous world. And this dangerous world still has its pharaohs. Its mad rulers out to perpetrate genocide — the systematic killing of a particular race or ethnicity of people. For Hitler it was the Jews and the gypsies and the gays. For Slobodan Milosovec it was the Bosnians. For Saddam Hussein it was the Kurds. Today, in Sudan, it is the people of Darfur.

But we know this. We know that in the end good is going to prevail. So no matter how small or insignificant we are — even if we’re just a couple of slave midwives — we, the people of God, will always lend our bodies to the right side of history in support of the oppressed.

You say the little things I do
Will do no good
Never will prevail
To tip the hovering scale
Justice keeps in balance
I never said I thought they would
But I am prejudiced beyond debate
In favor of my right to choose
Which side shall feel
The stubborn ounces of my weight

And the child grows big. And the child grows strong. And the child is given the name Moses, meaning “drawn out” — because he was drawn out of the water. Drawn out of the water in a little boat called, in Hebrew, an “ark”.

I’m looking for an ark right now. The fair is in town and I got a strange call asking me to sit in the dunk booth for the benefit of Burlington Emergency Shelter. Apparently somebody thought some of you might like a chance to try and drown me. I do not know what I was thinking but I said yes to such madness. So next Saturday at 3:30 p.m. you can take your shot. I told Irie and she had the gall to ask how much it was going to cost. “I want to save up,” she said.

But I’m going to cling to a promise, symbolized in a rainbow. I’m going to cling to the promise of God’s words and believe that God is not going to let me drown.

And I’m going to ask you to believe it too.

“When you pass through the waters,” declares the Lord, “I will be with you. When you cross rivers they will not overwhelm you. And when you walk through the fire, the flames will not consume you.”

And when a new Pharaoh comes to Egypt, you remember that no matter how big or how bad he is, that new pharaoh in your Egypt is no match — no match — for the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.

So stay tight. Pick up your Bibles and read the story. Come on this journey with us. Because God is gonna draw his people out of Egypt. You watch.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

No Telling

2008-07-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

Msnbc.com has an online story about twins - one white and one black - born to the same parents July 11. That's right. One black kid and one white one. Add a pink one and you've got neopolitan.

I note the story because of something strange that happened to my family as we were out for a walk yesterday. Seeing me on one side and Irie on the other with Gabby in between us, a woman walked over and the first words out of her mouth were - I kid you not - "You can't even tell."

Now, it turns out that this woman has biracial children of her own, so I didn't take her words to be hostile. In fact, even if she didn't have biracial children, Irie and I want to encourage more discussion about race and so we encourage people to struggle with words. That's how we learn language. By trying and failing and trying again. This is one thing that people of color have over white people when it comes to dialogue about race. They've been talking race all their lives; they are fluent. They know how to negotiate the rough places.

But nevertheless, "You can't even tell," does seem a bit outrageous. That's what we say about mustard stains, not children.

Black. . .but

2008-07-03T17:21:00.000-07:00

Under the rules of apartheid white Afrikaners were to be totally set apart from all other races in every aspect of daily life. Blacks, therefore, could not work or travel in white areas without government approval. When Desmond Tutu was elected Archbishop of Cape Town he was offered a special dispensation. He could legally live in the archbishop's home in the white section of Cape Town as - and this was a legal term - an "honorary white".

Tutu refused. Instead of living legally as an honorary white person, he instead chose to live illegally as a black person, daring the South African authorities to do something about it.

While honorary whiteness is not a legally sanctioned status here in America, I know first hand that it still exists in many people's minds. Back in Durham I was talking to an old white man about how we felt we were called to be reconcilers. I was treading carefully and trying to invite him into our story because I knew he had a problem with black people. "Oh, Irie," he said, "she's not really black." I thought, "My man, I hope you never tell her that."

The statement is revealing. Black people like Irie simply could not exist in this man's world. She could not even have the dignity to be a "credit to her race." She had to be another race altogether.

But I'm not going to cast stones. I remember when I first started dating I would be talking to friends back home and telling them something like, "Well, I'm seeing this girl and she's black, but she's smart." Later on I noticed my mom doing it too. "I saw Billy's mom at the grocery store and I told her that you had met someone special and that she is black but she's very pretty."

Why the "but"?

Two things.

The first is a charitable, yet I think true, reading. My mom and I both knew what people were going to think and we wanted to have them hear us out. If I were to unpack the sentence we were saying, "She's black but hear me out because she's not what I know is already in your head."

The second reading is less charible, but no less true. Something visceral in us was saying, "She's black, but she's an exception."

We're learning to name that. To confess it and call it the demon that it is.

And I'm also learning to say, "My wife, Irie, she's black.

"She's black and. . ."

Untraining Racial Profiling in VT

2008-06-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

Sunday's Burlington Free Press ran an opinion piece by me about a pilot project in our community aimed at combatting racial profiling.

I think there is tremendous potential for good gains with this project. It will help officers develop the third eye.

For those of you in other parts of the country, this could be something for your local and state law enforcement to consider.

Here's the link to the article:

My Turn: Helping good cops be better

Truth Telling: The Church's gift to the State

2008-06-20T14:35:00.000-07:00

Over these past few weeks I've been reading and learning a lot about the South African Council of Churches (SACC) role in what can only be described as the miracle of South Africa. What has amazed and inspired me the most is the church's ability to look Caesar in the eye and tell him the truth. "You are not God; your reign will not last forever."

Throughout the ages the great heroes of our faith have stood witness to the truth before the thrones of this world. Daniel interpreted the writing on the wall to King Belshazzar and told him he would die because he trusted in the gods of silver and gold. John the Baptist spoke courageously when he told Herod it was not right for him to have his brother's wife. Paul prophesied to his centurion captor about "danger and much heavy loss" if the ship they were on continued to sail.

As a church we have by and large lost that prophetic voice. These days we are much more likely to chaplain the State than we are to speak truth to it.

Why? Because speaking truth is a fearful and lonely enterprise and only the most courageous of people ever do it.

When I graduated from Duke Divinity School Rev. Dr. Peter Storey delivered the commencement address. Storey had previously served as president of the SACC and was close friend and confidant of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In 1980 the two were the targets of an unsuccessful assasination attempt.

In his commencement address Storey (left) talked about the pastor who was driving down the highway when his cell phone rang. It was his wife. "Honey, be careful," she said, "there is a madman out there on the highway going the wrong way." "It's worse than that," the pastor told his wife, "there are hundreds of madmen going the wrong way."

To stand up to Caesar and tell the truth about war and peace and race and religion puts us in the line of a lot of oncoming traffic. But it is the right way to go. And the State desperately needs us to do it.

Who else would? It's been the Church's gift to the State from the very beginning. And it is still our gift.

So, with a little encouragement for us all, I'll close by sharing something Desmond Tutu wrote to Caesar about the Church at the height of the apartheid era:

The SACC is a Council of Churches, not a private organization. The Church has been in existence for nearly 2000 years. Tyrants and others have acted against Christians during thsoe years. They have arrested them, they have killed them, they have proscribed the faith. Those tyrants belong now to the flotsam and jetsam of forgotten history-and the Church of God remains, an agent of justice, of peace, of love and reconciliation. If they take the SACC and the Churches on, let them know they are taking on the Church of Jesus Christ.

Chatrooms and Classifieds

2008-06-11T07:23:00.000-07:00

Sounded intriguing didn't it?

Below is an article I wrote intending it to be published in our local newspaper, the Burlington Free Press. Apparently it didn't make the cut. So it ended up here, where all my stuff that doesn't make the cut ends up.

Two stories. Both involving the Free Press. Each revealing the difficulties we as a community face when it comes to talking about race, religion, and other matters of contention.

I am the pastor of the United Church of Colchester. Right now we are in the search for a new church musician and we chose to advertise in the classifieds section of both the Free Press and another local paper. The ad we came up with was (I thought) a fairly simple one:

Organist and/or pianist. United Church of Colchester. 9-12 choir members. Thursday night practice. Christian faith preferred.

Both newspapers said they would be happy to run the ad, but would have to remove "Christian faith preferred" in order to conform to their Classifieds policies. One of the ad reps I spoke with said the statement was "discriminatory" and could get the paper and our church in "a lot of trouble."

The second story comes from a recent Free Press story about the absence of any black teachers in the Burlington School District, and the district's efforts to recruit more teachers of color. Response to that article in the paper's online "Storychat" was heated enough to force the Free Press to close down the online forum. I remember that when a Free Press editorial called for increased teacher diversity last fall things got pretty animated also. One person in the chat room went so far as to label the district's employment of a full-time diversity coordinator "tax payer rape." Things must have gotten even more heated this time to warrant shutting down the conversation.

At the heart of both these stories is a question over affirmative action. More specifically, it is a question about how to best take affirmative action to ensure we do not discriminate on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, physical disability, or sexual preference in our hiring practices.

I am not very hopeful that we, in our varied religious and political convictions, are going to come up with an interpretation that will satisfy everyone. I am a little more hopeful, however, that most will agree that the United Church of Colchester ought to be able to state publicly that faith is a central and bona fide consideration for us. As I told one of the ad reps I discussed the matter with, "We are a church, after all."

But in any case, I think the two stories illustrate how difficult it is to have a public conversation about competing values today. The way between stultifying political correctness and stultifying acerbic is a narrow one. When we run aground on charged terms like "discriminatory" and "tax payer rape" how are we to go on? The only option is to shut down the chat room.

As Vermonters we are better than that. We should show it by agreeing to conduct our public discourse in a more civil way, and give those on the other side of our debates something that is sorely lacking these days — grace.

Donnas

2008-05-29T07:40:00.000-07:00

An interesting article ran today in the Times about the complex issues one Portland neighborhood is dealing with as it faces racial gentrification.

A lot of yuppies find the uber-hipness of America's urban landscapes to be a real draw. They want affordable and walkable communities where they can know their neighbors. And they want those neighbors to be diverse.

And that's the irony, because the more highly coveted neighborhoods are, the more expensive they become. And, inevitably, the less diverse they become also.

That's what is happening in Portland.

And it's happening here in Winooski too. And the Old North End of Burlington also.

But that's not why I'm blogging about it. I'm blogging about it because of what the Times reported one of the white Portland residents recently asked in a citizens' forum. Joan Laufer, a new resident in the neighborhood, stood up and asked the black people in the meeting what they would like for her to call them - black or African-Americans?

"People," one black woman up front said. And then, from the back, an even more human word. A name. "Donna."

That's what it is going to take. We're going to have to go beyond knowing people as black or white or latino or whatever. We need to know them as Donna.

A few years back, when I was living in Durham, NC, a group of ladies from one of the white churches in town and a group of ladies from one of the black churches started getting together to pray and talk candidly about race and the "Broad Street Divide" that separated their communities. The churches sat only a few blocks apart from each other on either side of Broad Street, but sat were worlds apart in just about every other way. The women from those churches decided to bring the worlds together.

Six years later something profound has happened. The black church is no longer only a black church any more. It's a New Testament church now, as Sunday after Sunday its pews are filled with both black and white faces. And the white church has changed too. This past Lent, 26 members from their congregation journeyed on a "Lenten Pilgrimage Of Pain and Hope" into Durham's inner-city. Imagine that. Twenty-six people dared to cross divides of race, class, and comfort in the name of the Jesus who is destroying those divides.

And the name of one of the key women who six years ago was a part of that group of women from the two churche who decided to meet and pray?

That's right. Donna.

A Progressive Christian Conudrum

2008-05-29T06:30:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the latest tragedies in China and Myanmar I've been thinking about the challenge an escalation in global disasters present to non-fundamentalist Christians.

For a long time now a lot of progressive Christians have been insisting that there has not been an increase in earthquakes, famines, floods, etc. The argument was that global disasters were always prevalent and so, the argument went, we shouldn't point to a spate of earthquakes, wars, famines, etc. as signs that the Apocalypse is imminent. The way I experienced the conversation, typically someone - usually the conservative in the room - would point to some natural or manmade disaster and say that the world was obviously getting worse. Then - usually by the progressive in the room - the rebuff would come. The progressive would make a statement about earthquakes and famines and other terrible things always having been occuring, but our awareness of them, through the advent of mass communication, being the thing that changed.

But now, it seems that a lot of environmental and humanitarian organizations are arguing that global climate change is increasing both the frequency and magnitude of global disasters. And a lot of progressive Christians are agreeing.

What's a progressive Christian to do?

I don't think any Christians should ever give up on the idea that Jesus is coming back imminently. I think progressive Christians did so as a knee-jerk, fear-induced reaction to a particularly virulent kind of Apocalypticism that thinks that Jesus is coming back soon so we shouldn't worry about global issues like climate change, or deforestation, or debt relief for developing countries. We should just get people saved.

No. We should get people saved AND we should worry about all these global issues because, you guessed it, JESUS IS COMIMG BACK.

And the arrival may be imminent.

Blogging and Pastoring

2008-05-23T06:21:00.000-07:00

I've caught some grief for not blogging lately. One person emailed me to say my blog "kinda sucks" these days.

As I debated whether or not to get back on the computer today I realized how good it would feel for me to write and tell you all how missed I am. I realized how good it would feel to lead right off with the opening sentence I crafted "I've caught some grief for not blogging lately," as if it had said "I've caught a lot of grief for not blogging lately." But the truth is the only grief I have caught has come from the one person who emailed to say my blog "kinda sucks".

Maybe the most important book I ever read was Henri Nouwen's little book In the Name of Jesus. It is a reflection on the tempations Jesus endured in the wilderness, which Nouwen says are the temptations to be relevant. That is, the temptations to create, perform, and produce so well that we become, in our own minds, singularly indispensable. It is embarrassingly incriminating that in the last year I have written for a publication named - you guessed it - Relevant Magazine.

Blogging has this great way of distorting just how important we really are. We put these words together and they sound good, and sometimes they move us, and then we send them out there and we think, "That's gonna mean something to somebody." We are a lot like those astronomers and what not who beam out Frank Sinatra or the Declaration of Independence into the nethers of space. We'll never know, but it sure is nice to think this might matter to someone in some galaxy far far away.

But closer to home, here in Colchester, with my parishioners, I know things matter. I know I matter. But I don't matter like I wish I mattered or dream I matter on my blog (when it doesn't suck). I matter in the way that the spring birds outside my window matter. I don't know their names. I don't know what their personalities are like. If one were to come and replace another I never would no the difference. But if one were not to come and replace another I certainly would know. I would know through absence. And that absence would be a great heaviness.

I was on the phone with one of the ladies from the church yesterday. She told me, "I want you to know I pray for you every day. I pray for you because you are our leader."

I'm not relevant, in the sense of being special or irreplaceable. I'm relevant because, for these people, I am here. Present. Set apart to have a little time off to go and be near to those who are sick and hurting and disbelieving. Set apart to hold their hand for a little while why they cry.

I know that if I were to leave, I would not be missed. But my hands would.

And that's the difference between blogging and pastoring.

Typical Whiteboy Talk

2008-04-21T11:03:00.000-07:00

How else except by becoming a Negro could a white man hope to learn the truth?

John Howard Griffin

Black Like Me

In my response to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy What's Up With Barack's Pastor? I said that blacks and whites read Jesus differently. I then went on to explain what I saw as the differences.

I confess that my comments were grossly stereotyped. In fact, it was precisely that kind of grossly-stereotyped statement that got Barack Obama in hot water when he referred to his own grandmother as "a typical white person" who has sometimes visceral reactions to people of other (darker?) races.

In a helpful post my friend and former professor Mike Broadway noted that he and I, both white, have for whatever reasons entered into this strange world as racial reconcilers. As such, we sometimes feel compelled to translate for white people what black people think. Mike graciously pointed out just how absurd that really is - white people speaking on behalf of black people. I was a little chastened and promised myself to be more careful in public from here on out.

Yet, at the same time, I know that when it's just me and Irie I can say, "Typical black people feel this way," and "Typical white people feel that way," and it is truth. And that, in this highly charged climate of racial politics, is precisely the challenge: public and private discourses.

Of course, these divergent discourses have always been present. There has always been an intra-white language and an intra-black language. These divergent languages developed on the plantation and never fully gone away.

Let me give a case in point. Irie's mom grew up in a conservative Pentecostal home. The Gospel she has heard most of her life is not the hard-edged, politically-charged speech of black liberation. Yet when the whole Rev. Wright thing erupted her surprise was not at his rhetoric - for rhetoric like that has always been present in some aspect in the black community. Rather, the shock for her was that white people heard it. "Oh, no, no, no," she said, "Ya'll not supposed to hear that!"

Ya'll not supposed to hear that because ya'll don't know the language. Ya'll gonna misintepret.

But now we're entering into a new era. We're entering into an era where the language barriers are beginning to be crossed. Mike and I are going back and forth. But more to my point, Barack Obama is. In fact, he was born across the line. His mother was white, and his grandparents were white. Typical white people (typically speaking). And so, (typically speaking) he knows what typical white people typically think. And I bet he talks about it (typically) at home with Michelle all the time.

But there it is again, that private language. He can (typically) talk about it at home, but can't (typically) bring it into the public arena. Or he'll be in big trouble (typically).

Near the end of Black Like Me John Howard Griffin tells about coming back into white America after having temporarily darkened himself and living as a black man in the Deep South. After having been in the black community for something like six weeks he knows what they think. He knows that all the platituding "yes sir" and "no sir" and "us Negros are real happy with our station in life" business was just fear-induced, public speech. It was the exact opposite of how blacks really felt in those pre - civil rights days.

On his first day back into white society he checked himself into a white hotel and was met at the door by a black porter. For six weeks Griffin had been "just a typical Negro" and he now knew how they thought. "[The porter] gave me the smiles, the 'yes, sir - yes, sir.' . . . I felt like saying. 'You're not fooling me,' but now I was back on the other side of the wall."

I'm tired of crossing the wall and then coming back over. I'm ready for the wall to come down.

Old Timers

2008-04-21T06:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday our church hosted a lunch conversation about the history of our church. We invited everyone to bring pictures and other memorabilia to share. Among the really cool things shared:

1. A foot heater. Used in bygone days, the foot heat had a small door that coals could be dropped into. The heater would then be set into the bottom of the sleigh -that's right sleigh - for the ride down to the church. At church you'd get another lump of coal for the return ride.

2. Pew doors. We took the doors off our pews sometime in the 20th century. But one of the pillars of our church and I braved cobwebs, dust, and and who knows what else to retrieve them from the cellar last Wednesday. The pew doors kept the heat in - provided by the foot heater above - and the draft out while parishioners listened to somber sermons from fellas like this unidentified former pastor:

3. A write up about our former pastor Rev. Elgin Bucklin, who led a trip of over a 25 Vermont youths down to Harlem to worship at Abysinnian Baptist Church. This was an extension of Rev. Ritchie Low's (picture below) racial reconciliation project which I wrote about here.

4. Two of our oldest members sat together and shared about their trip with Rev. Low and a few other boys down to Washington to meet President Hoover. That's right, Hoover. Rev. Low took them down to deliver syrup to the president before the Vermont Maple industry got big. Their trip made news in other states - a trip to Washington in 1929 was no small thing - and helped spread the word about Vermont maple. I said I thought our church deserved some of the royalties from all the sales over these last 80 years.

After the old timers had finished reminiscing I paused, walked over and grabbed both of their arms. "Ritchie Low was their pastor," I said, "and I am their pastor." Then I heard someone from another table bring the amen. "That's right," he said.

That's right.

Casting Out Demons

2008-04-15T05:33:00.000-07:00

Because it is Spring I have had a sudden impulsive urge to clean out the snow room and the closets, and get rid of stuff I don't want.

It started off really easy. I walked out onto our front porch took a look around and decided I didn't want any of the junk that had piled up all winter. In one fell swoop I got rid of a whole rat-nest of unwanted stuff. No qualms, easy as pie. I was a man on a mission.

Of course, the junk I was getting rid of was all Gabby's. (How do one year olds already have junk anyway?)

After doing the do on Gabby's junk I decided to take a look at my own. I pulled out an old tie I haven't worn since 7th grade or so. And then I found a couple of winter coats people had shoveled off on me. They made it sound like they were looking after me - "You're a Vermonter now, afterall, you need to stay warm" - but the truth is they were just looking for an easy goodbye. Kind of like finding a nice home for the puppy who keeps eating petunias. One of the coats bordered on the ridiculous. It was a kind of long, buckskin, muff-collared, Buffalo Bill meets Macy Gray, trench. In order to pull off wearing this in public you have to sport either a six-shooter or an afro. I sport neither, so saying goodbye was pretty easy.

But then last night I was digging through my closet and I pulled out this little urban hipster jacket I bought from Gap a few years back. I thought to myself, "Ryon you have not worn this coat in at least four years. You need to give it away." And then, suddenly my belly and my shoulders began to tingle. Another voice appeared. "But it's still a good coat. And when the weather is right you might still wear it. In fact, you could wear it tomorrow, it's going to be so nice."

I think I get it. That coat represents something to me. It represents some part of me that hasn't died yet. Some part of me that still wants to walk aimlessly around 48th and 8th, smoking cigarettes and reciting Dylan lyrics. And that little tingle in my belly was that part of me saying, "No, please, I'm not ready to go yet." If I may be so bold as to use Biblical language, it was a demon in search of a body. A demon that screamed at me like legion. "Please," he begged, "don't send me off into the abyss."

This morning I cast that demon out. I threw him over a yellow metal cliff. I heard him him from outside. He was drowning in a sea of old ladies' sweaters and old men's flannel. They'll soon be buried together in a place called Goodwill.

And I feel clean.

With Amplification

2008-04-14T05:59:00.000-07:00

The deacons at my church gave me some feedback the other day with a performance evaluation. All was well. I especially appreciated a very personal and encouraging letter. It's good to be in this together. What Paul called "partners in the Gospel."

One thing I want to share though. In the section where my preaching was evaluated there was a comment that said, "occasionally, with amplification." Nice euphemism, ladies and gents.

In my defense:

"What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, shout from the rooftops."

Change of Heart?

2008-04-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

My former Baptist Studies professor and friend Curtis Freeman has an interesting article in the Journal of Southern Religion about former pastor of First Baptist Church Dallas, Texas W.A. Criswell's 1968 flip flop on this issue of racial segregation. Freeman questions the sincerity of Criswell's change, and argues that politically "pragmatic concessions" were no less instrumental in the reversal than was true religious conversion.

A few thoughts:

1. Given the public examination of Barack Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright's controversial statements I thought it was interesting to read how the most famous member of First Baptist Dallas responded to his own pastor's racially-charged rhetoric. Criswell told a crowd at the 1956 South Carolina evangelism conference, “Why the NAACP has got those East Texans on the run so much that they dare not pronounce the word chigger any longer. It has to be cheegro.” Billy Graham distanced himself from his pastor's comments saying, “My Pastor and I have never seen eye to eye on the race question.” Interesting.

2. Freeman shares how conservative Baptist theologian Russell Moore believes that what fundamentally changed race relations in the South was not theological liberalism but rather the troubled conscience of conservative evangelical Christianity. Moore is quoted as saying, “It is to our own shame that we ignored our own doctrines to advance racial pride. And it is to our further shame that, in so many cases, we needed theological liberals to remind us of what we said we believed.” I think Moore is absolutely right in that there had to be at some point a critical mass of conservatives who finally saw the light. But that doesn't necessarily mean the conservative Southern establishment should be credited with ending segregation. It only means it should be acknowledged for no longer being hypocritical. It is those who had the courage to call the South out in its hypocrisy that deserve to be called prophets.

3. And most important, Criswell's change of heart. When, I have to wonder, are we ever truly converted? I think of Peter. He had a vision from God. As clear as day, nothing and no one was to be unclean. And then while in the midst of the dream there was a knock downstairs and the Gentiles appeared. This was not something he could doubt. No mere coincidence. But, Peter wavered. For a long time he went back and forth depending on who he was with and how hot the kitchen heat was. And yet, we remember him today as the one who cracked the vessel.

According to Freeman in 1972 Criswell reflected on his 1968 public endorsement of integregation and admitted it was not at the time whole hearted. “My soul and attitude may not have changed, but my public statements did,” Criswell said. So, I wonder to myself right now, What is change? His soul and attitude did not change, but his public statements did. That was not nothing. In fact, I think it was very significant. It was the way we all change usually I think. Piecemeal. Bit-by-bit at their appointed times.

And we are still changing . . .

King's Last Speech

2008-04-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

Martin Luther King, Jr. preached his last sermon 40 years ago today. By the end of the next day he would be dead.

If you have never seen or heard or read it, you need to watch this clip. The clip is short, real short, but incredibly powerful. Eerily powerful.

Watch it. Listen to the words. Let them get into your bones. And let them give those bones life.

We ain't seen the Promised Land yet.

But we will.

Practicing our Faith

2008-04-01T18:32:00.000-07:00

I want to share with you a brief audio clip from Andy Root's work with the Faithful Practices Project at Princeton Theological Seminary.

In his work Root reflects upon relational youth ministry and makes a distinction between "instrumental" relationships between ministers and young people which are always in the end about something else other than the relationship (a come to Jesus talk) and the kind of relational ministry which embodies the Gospel in its substantive practices (like showing up after a kid's parent has just been sent to the pokie).

The difference is not one uses words and the other doesn't (for as Paul says, how can they know if they haven't heard). Rather, the distinction is between doing something that gets us into a place to do what we really want to do versus doing something all along the way. What I mean by this is practice - something constitutively embedded within our encounters with each other that both points toward and is the Kingdom of God.

In other words (and this is for the grown ups) it ain't about getting people to the 10:30 service. Instead, its about the substance of our encounters with each other as we live out our lives together - including the substance of the worshiping we do together at 10:30.

When I say substance I mean the "What is" of the relationship between and among us. Another way of saying that is "character".

And we certainly have a few of those running around . . .

The Boys of LHS Part VI

2008-04-01T12:20:00.000-07:00

I grew up relatively well off. We weren't rich but we definitely weren't poor either. Bottom line, we had a pool.

The pool was, of course, not enough. And neither was the Chevy stepside with the 350 under the hood. And neither was making the Varsity football team my sophomore year. It was all good. Cool. Exactly what I wanted, but not enough.

[Young Life enters stage right with Gospel in mouth]: "In every of us, there is a God-shaped vacuum. And it can be filled by nothing and no one else but God."

It was a classic example of Maslow's Hierachy. I had all my physical needs met, but I still needed spiritual actualization. Jesus brought that. It was the Gospel truth.

When I started doing ministry with the boys of LHS I simply assumed the Maslovian framework. It was good for me and so it must be good for them. But there was one nuance. Whereas my physical needs had been met, that wasn't necessarily the case with the boys of LHS. So I started doing things. With the aid of Lubbock Young Life I was able to help them out with money for a burger. And maybe some money for shoes. We picked up most of their cost for camp. I was earning the right to be heard.

But here is the thing that I am wrestling with. Doesn't it seem a little silly to and self-defeating to take a kid and give something to him or her only to then turn around and say, "And by the way, that thing I just gave you - it ain't what you're really looking for. What you're looking for can't be met with a burger or new shoes or a trip to camp. You've got a God-shaped hole in your heart and . . ."

Suddenly I'm wondering. Maybe the Gospel wasn't just the message at the end of all that "earning the right to be heard" medium. Maybe the Gospel was wrapped up in the medium itself. Maybe the Gospel was the time we shared together over a burger - even when I got USED by them just like the patronizing white boy would. "Price, take us out to Burger King, Price," one kid used to say over and over.

What I'm getting at is the idea that maybe the Gospel isn't really the cherry on top of Maslow's Hierarchy, but is instead, some kind of fabulous relationship with God and each other that breaks forth across all of life, cutting across the false and dualistic distinctions between physical and spiritual needs.

Maybe I'm saying that the Gospel is really the inbreaking of what Jesus called the Kingdom of God into everything - from the shoes on up.

Maybe.

Ontologically Speaking

2008-03-26T12:57:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I was sitting with a group of pastors I gather with weekly to study and reflect upon our upcoming Sunday sermons. At the end of our discussion about Jesus and Thomas and the meaning of bodily resurrection things turned to politics. Everyone began bantering about the 2008 presidential election. Being that my tummy was beginning to growl I saw the drift into presidential politics as my curtain call. I stood up and said something like, "Well, all I know is none of these three candidates is our savior."

It was a pious statement that no respectable Christian could disagree with. But I have to confess there was more than just pretty talk about Jesus in my words. What I was really saying is that all three of these candidates, Clinton, McCain, and Obama, share something that our savior never had - a will to presidential power.

Then this morning I moused over to Ethicsdaily.com and read Miguel De La Torre's scathing critique of these three. In his article "What Do Obama, Clinton and McCain All Have In Common?" De La Torre says that there is no substantive difference between any of the three respective candidates because they each are each operating under a philosophical framework which is in the end classist.

But the really interesting, and I think fundamentally incorrect, thing De La Torre says about the candidates is that they are each "ontologically white males."

Excuse me?

Two things.

First, if in 2008 we can now speak of ontologies of gender and race in such a way as they are completely severed from both sex, race, color, and ethnicity, then I want to suggest that we should not speak about them at all because they have essentially lost all natural meaning.

Secondly, if we can now play so fast and lose with gender and race, then why is the white male exceptional? Why is the white male reserved as the cipher for "pro-empire" "global neoliberalism"?

Apparently the more things change, the more they stay the same.

earth as it is in heaven

2008-03-25T14:33:00.000-07:00

My friend and former teacher Mike Broadway has just responded to my post about Rev. Jeremiah Wright on his own blog earth as it is in heaven.

The truest thing I can say about Mike is that he is a real Christian. He has been a living witness to what Christ has done to destroy the barrier between the races for several decades now. He and Chris Rice have taught me how to speak about race as white men.

So here's the quote I want to share with you. It says everything I feel and describes what I am coming to realize is one of my most important callings in this Gospel life:

[Ryon] and I find ourselves in an unusual situation for white baptist ministers. We get called on to be mediators of black life for whites who wonder, marvel, and puzzle about race. We know we are not up to the task.

Mike goes on to desribe the impossibility of the task.

Here also is Mike's full reflection.

Funny Stuff

2008-03-24T06:54:00.001-07:00

As the pastor of a small church I felt in on the joke.

As a pastor who loves coffee I felt like the butt of the joke.

As a pastor in the 21st century I felt like whatever is being said here ought to be discussed.

Thanks to reallivepreacher and Caffeinated Thoughts for the spot.

What's Up with Barack's Pastor?: An Easter Meditation

2008-03-23T14:14:00.000-07:00

I was up talking on the phone with my dad until 12:15 am on Wednesday morning. We talked about father son things — cars, the weather, and our predictions for the NCAAs. Then, about half way through, the conversation turned serious. Dad asked, “So what’s up with Barack’s pastor?”

Dad was asking me because I am a minister and married to a black woman. He thought maybe I might have some special insight into why Sen. Obama would consider a polarizing preacher like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright a sound spiritual mentor. I could hear the earnestness in Dad’s voice. He is in a new place. Since he now has a black daughter-in-law and a biracial grandchild he knows that he now has something at stake when race moves from the periphery into the center of public dialogue, as it now has in the 2008 presidential campaign. For Dad the questions being raised are more important and more personal than ever.

He isn’t alone. For the first time in our nation’s history we may very well see a black person elected to the Oval Office. That has white people all across America asking the same thing my dad is asking. What’s up with Barack’s pastor?
The religious left (including Rev. Wright himself) has defended Rev. Wright’s preaching by locating it within the prophetic black rhetorical tradition. They argue that whites standing outside the culture and ethos of the black community — and especially the black church — simply cannot understand the sociology at work in the black pulpit and should, therefore, refrain from criticizing it. Certainly Rev. Wright’s jeremiadic voice does belong inside a long and venerable tradition of black preachers speaking from and for people on the margins. But the idea that words coming out of this prophetic place are somehow beyond critique is flat wrong and ought to be exposed for what it really is — nothing more than a sociologically dressed up version of, “It’s a black thing . . . you wouldn’t understand.”

On the other side is the response not being offered in any of America’s newspapers but certainly present at many of its dinner tables. This response is only one word, but that one word says a lot about where we are with race in 2008. “Figures.” A lot of whites hear the charged rhetoric coming from Rev. Wright’s pulpit and they receive it as confirmation of all their suspicions about black people, Barack Obama included. In other words, “I totally understand . . . it’s a black thing.”

Well, it is most certainly a black thing. And it is a white thing also. Out of their very divergent historical experiences blacks and whites tend to read and interpret history differently. A case in point: Thomas Jefferson. Whites see Jefferson as a great hero and champion of democracy. Blacks, on the other hand, often see Jefferson as a man who never could quite shake the mindset of a master in order to live up to his ideals. Jefferson is an excellent case study, but I want to suggest that at the heart of this whole thing are divergent and in some ways mutually exclusive interpretations of another historical figure: Jesus. That’s right, I’m suggesting this whole thing is a Christological problem. In other words, it’s a black thing and it’s a white thing, but it is also most definitely a Jesus thing.

Blacks and whites read Jesus differently. Rev. Wright is black and his congregation is largely (and unashamedly) black. So when he reads about Jesus he reads about a man of color born into and killed by the cruel forces of a racist empire. That’s true and ought to be preached.

When most white Americans, like my dad, think of Jesus they think of the man who died an atoning death for their individual sins. Jesus was a great Jewish leader whose teachings show us how to live morally exemplary lives. That’s true and ought to be preached also.

It is difficult, however, to see why a religious teacher concerned primarily with making nice guys out of meanies would have raised the eyebrows of the powers that be. I just can’t buy that. On the other hand, it is equally difficult to believe that a radical revolutionary bent liberating his people from oppression by any means necessary would have gone to the cross without putting up a fight.

Perhaps it is more than just ironic that this whole debate would surface just before Easter. Two-thousand years after his death we are still asking what the early witnesses of Jesus’ ministry asked. “Who is this man?”

Who this man is to us still matters.

And, in 2008, who this man is to others matters more than ever also.

Katrina Relief Urban Project Part II

2008-03-21T11:33:00.000-07:00

Intervarsity is partnering with a local church in St. Bernard's Parish that housed us and coordinated all of our work. Adullam Christian Fellowship is a storefront church founded in 1996 by Pastor Randy Millet and his wife Jill. It is definitely not the kind of church I would usually want to attend. But it was definitely the kind of church I needed to attend last week. Again, I said the word "powerful" keeps coming to mind and that is what I see at Adullam - a power-filled ministry.

If you have ever seen the movie The Apostle with Robert Duvall then you might have a clue as to the kind of preacher and pastor Pastor Randy is. I can't really say that Pastor Randy had a sermon prepared the Sunday we attended his church. But I can say that he had a word from God. That is to say, he preached.

He preached life into what is otherwise a dead community. St. Bernard's was washed completely away by Katrina and Adullam Christian Fellowship lost 9 out of 10 of its membership to displacement after the storm. (In fact, Pastor Randy's mother-in-law was one of the ones who lost their lives in one of those nursing homes.) But I gotta say that Pastor Randy is literally preaching St. Bernard's back into existence. What were once dead bones are now alive again and that little church is becoming an incubator for the Gospel, not only in the New Orleans, but across the world. Mark it down.

So what did I learn? Pastor Randy runs with folks like Benny Hinn and a bunch of other church movers like that. Not the kind of guy I would have chosen to bring a bunch of skeptical college students out to see. I was thinking, "O man, I'm gonna have to do a lot of explaining." But man, there was something very very real about what was going on in worship and I looked up and about half the students who came with us were dancing in the aisles by the end of the service. And those who weren't dancing basically said, "Hey, it wasn't me, but I really appreciated being a part of it all."

St. Bernard's Parish ain't gonna come back to life by boring exegesis. But it is gonna come back - it is coming back - by the proclamation of a Jesus who is alive and wants dead bones to dance.

Katrina Relief Urban Project Part I

2008-03-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

I rolled in from my trip to New Orleans early Sunday morning. When I talk about the trip the word that keeps coming out is "powerful." God is doing powerful things in New Orleans. And God is doing powerful things in the lives of the 150 or so college students who I went down there with. I would even say God is doing something powerful in my own life as a result of this trip.

Being that it is Holy Week and I have three services to prep for I am not going to try and put all my reflections into one single narrative form. I just don't have it in me.

But I do want to share a few key points. I'll do this in a series so as to give us all a break.

First, the devastation. It has been nearly three years since Katrina hit and most of the 9th Ward and St. Bernard's Parish, where we served, still look like they did two or three months after the storm. Most of the debris has been moved and most houses have by now been gutted, but very few have been repaired. It looks like a neutron bomb exploded, leaving something like 50,000 hulled out homes.

Those among our group of 150 or so who had been down to help with relief before said it was somewhat disheartening to return for a second or third time and see so little progress. The initial waves of volunteers who responded early on have substantially diminished since 2005. Ergo, so has the rate of progress.

One image from all this was particularly poignant. Most buildings still have the numbers spray painted on them right after the storm. There is the date and time that the building was searched, along with how many animals were found dead. At the bottom very prominently is the number of dead people found inside. All the buildings I saw had zero as that final number. I suspect most buildings where dead were found have by now been either repainted or completely demolished.

So now when you walk by you just see block after block of zeroes. None dead inside; but no one alive.

The Boys of LHS Part V

2008-02-27T08:53:00.000-08:00

On the first day of junior high I walked into my first class, Competitive Athletics - soon to be known as "C.A." I scanned the gymn and found a tall black kid with a high, Arsenio Hall fade up top. He was probably six foot at the time, but the fade gave him another two inches at least. He was by far the most athletic looking kid in the place, so I decided it would be strategic for me to get to know him. I sat down with a nod, waited for about five unassuming minutes to pass in silence, then introduced myself.

Elton Jones had just moved to Lubbock from Louisiana. He talked with an acute cajun accent that was hard for my West Texas ears to catch up with. I would soon discover that he not only looked like a good athlete, but was one. I had chosen wisely. Elton would be not only my first, but also my best friend in junior high.

Over the next three years we spent the night at each others' houses nearly every week. We shot baskets, went on trips, smoked Swisher Sweets, drank Kool-Aid (man, that Kool-Aid), threw eggs at passing cars, won three or four city championships, and "macked on" girls together. He was "Big E" and I was "Little P". And together we were a dynamic duo.

As we passed from junior high into high school, however, something happened to Elton and I. Elton started hanging around more with other black kids. I would invite him to do something, but he would have other plans. Then, when I got a truck and started giving Elton rides home from football practice, he was less grateful than I thought he should be. I can't really say things happened consciously, they just began to feel different. We remained friends, but we grew cooler and less trusting of one another.

I tried to make sense of why Elton and I were drifting apart. I had no language of my own to describe what was happening so I borrowed my father's language. It was a language that he had borrowed from someone else as well. It was the language white people always ended up using when blacks disappointed them. "Elton was a good black," I thought, "but he is becoming a N-Word."

To be completely fortright I am just now beginning to wrestle with the meaning of that word in my life. What does it mean for me, my family, and my work as an agent of reconciliation? All I can say is that I long for a day when there will be a great cleansing. Come, Lord Jesus.

But do not miss the real story. The expletive at the end of my statement was just a symptom of a much deeper force at work. Elton and I were actually being initiated into the cult of racialized manhood. He was undergoing his socialization into blackness, which meant he was beginning to question and take exception to the fact that all the white kids had trucks and all the black kids were left to bum rides. I, on the other hand, was being socialized into whiteness and thus assuming my mantle as one authorized to say who was a "good black" and who wasn't. In my characterization at the time, Elton was the only one who was changing. The reality, however, was that we were both undergoing a change. I was entering into a world of white privilege and he was entering into a world of black anger. In other words, we were both entering into a world fallen.

When I loaded the bus with the boys of LHS we brought that fallen world with us. At sixteen or seventeen their eyes had been opened for long enough to know that a chasm existed between us. And at 21 I was no longer naively expecting them to fall over themselves thanking me for the opportunity to just get out of Lubbock. We all knew that suspiscion and mistrust had boarded the bus with us.

And that is why camp is so important - not only for blacks and white, but for all people. Camp digs you up out of the crusty, hardened earth and replants you in new soil. That means that no matter how strong and invulnerable you were at home, at camp you are in jeopardy of dying.

I've seen it happen. I've seen tough kids, I mean mean dudes, melt to tears when faced with that first faithful step over the rappelling ledge. And I've also seen geeky kids become heroes when they get chosen to act out all of Hamlet in two minutes or less. But the best is when everybody - black ghetto kids and white suburbanites - by the nondiscriminating call of the square dance.

That's when you know that camp is working its magic - when everyone is all turned around in some giant Gordian knot. And that's when the camp speaker has it so easy. She just steps onto the stage and says, "You know, life is like that. We're all turned around in one giant mess. And there ain't not a one of us who knows enough to get out. And so we pray to God for help."

I think that is what happened between me and the boys of LHS. Only it was the horses and not the square dancing that did it.

Young Life has this cool way of keeping everything you are doing a secret. You know that like everybody else you are going to rappel, and you know you are going to do a ropes course, and you know you are going to drive go-carts, and you know you are going to ride horses. But when you are going to do that is a total mystery right up until go time. And it was go time with the horses that everyone was dreading.

We were dreading the horses because the horses - we were pretty sure - we could not control. And control is everything isn't it? Control is what this whole white versus black manhood thing is about anyways. We even said it outright when I was a kid. We would say so-and-so was a great coach because he could "handle the blacks." And when "good blacks" rejected being handled? Well, you already know what we said then.

But here we were with the horses and not one of us knew how to handle them. And because we were all out of our element - planted in new dirt - we didn't feel the pressure to lead on like we weren't scared.

So that's how it happened. It happened with a giant admission that we were afraid of not being in control. And the admission came from a young kid named Duck (Duck is the third guy from the left in the photo shamelessly cribbed from Glenn Austell) in a prayer he volunteered to give on the last night of camp.

It was evident that this kid had been to church. He brought out a giant bass voice from somewhere deep inside his chest. "Lo-ord," he started off, "we thank you for all thy many blessings. . ." I just wasn't ready for this. I had to bury my head into my pillow to keep from laughing. I heard snickers from all across the bunk beds. But funny as it was, there was no doubting the fact that this kid was a preacher. "And we are grateful for this Young Life camp, Frontier Ranch, a great blessing to us all." "And we are thankful for our leaders bringing us to this wonderful place in the Colorado Mountains. We are glad to get out of Lubbock."

The prayer went on. I quit laughing and began to pray along silently. Then, after several minutes, at the tail end came the word from God.

"And Lo-ord," Duck concluded, "if we ride horses tomorrow, I just pray I don't get a crazy one. Amen."

It was out of our control. It was in God's hands now.

Journaling

2008-02-27T07:33:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago a fairly well known evangelical leader came to the mega-church in town. He is somebody I have known of for a long time. Theologically and socially conservative, but also understanding of the fact that the post-Christian culture we live in should not be expected to accomodate Christianity.

I thought the guy was worth going to hear and I wanted to encourage some folks from my congregation to go with me. So I googled his name to get a bio that I could email around. The google turned up the most ridiculously absurd. Right in the top five of search results was this: "So-and-so also encourages a dangerous New Age practice - something called journaling."

Suddenly I was imagining some fundamentalist cavemen sitting around in leopard skins. "So-and-so also encourages a dangerous New Age practice - something called writing."

I tell you.

"Other Diversity"

2008-02-21T06:03:00.000-08:00

Ethicsdaily is carrying an op-ed by Gary Nelson about the New Baptist Covenant. Nelson has written the most insightful article I have seen yet. It is a friendly yet much needed critique of the old paradigm on which the New Baptist Covenant celebration was built.

It is a worthwhile read even for those who don't care anything about Baptist life because it lays out the central issues which are defining the church today. The core issue is this: the next generation of Baptists are the now generation of Baptists and unfortunately they were for the most part left off the ticket in Atlanta. The broader implication is that church just can't be done the way we've been doing it. This includes the way we have formulated language like Conservative or Progressive or Evangelical or Mainline. The point being that when I talk with clergy friends my age they say, "Well, I serve a Mainline church. But I'm an Evangelical. But, I mean, I am socially progressive. But, well, I'm also conservative when it comes to issues like sex and violence on TV."

See, the old wine skins are about to pop. And it's going to get messy. And the blood of Christ is going to be everywhere.

As an aside, Ethicsdaily would do well to listen to what Nelson is saying. Younger, postmodern Baptists do not define ourselves by what we are against - ie, the Southern Baptist Convention. Rather, we define ourselves by a common passion for authentic life with Jesus and with others. And most of us could find that in a Southern Baptist Church, or an Episcopal Church, or a United Church, or the bar down the street.

Baptist Blogger

2008-02-20T12:05:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the Burlington Free Press ran an article about me and this blog. To be honest, I haven't even read it yet. I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it.

There are something like 80 million blogs out there. I learned that in a Times article yesterday that talked about some of the "ultimate blogs" that are out there. I was not surprised that Fromthewilderness was left off the ultimate list.

That's probably why I haven't read the Free Press article here. Because there is no story. Nothing sexy. Certainly nothing that would be described as ultimate. I mean, my pictures aren't even in focus.

A pastor friend of mine called me to rib me about the whole thing. I told him how creepy I was feeling and that I couldn't even bring myself to read the article. He went into compassionate pastor mode. "Well, it was pretty innocuous," he said. "Yes," I said, "and that is the point. Blessed are the innocuous was not a beatitude."

Look, for some reason I am writing this thing. And, for some reason you are reading it. And so it is what it is. Not sexy. Not ultimate. But a gift. To me and I hope to you too.

Ryon

The Laying on of Hands

2008-02-18T08:22:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we celebrated the calling of two new deacons at our church.

I have participated in a lot of laying on of hands ceremonies over the years and for the most part pretty much considered the whole thing as a merely symbolic act. We Baptists are inherently skeptical of rites and ceremony. That's why we have "ordinances" instead of "sacraments". Because we would rather be safe than sorry, we tend to stay well clear of what we see as a fine line between holy acts and "empty rituals".

But yesterday, as I held my hands upon the shoulders of our new deacons, I realized that my hands were more than just outward symbols of an inward blessing. I was literally trying to bless these two with my hands. The best way I can describe what I was feeling is to remember the movie Ghost, when that Patrick Sweazy character was trying to learn how to move things with his mind. The trick, he was learning, was to put all of one's self into the object.

That's what I was doing yesterday. I looked up and realized that my fingers were buried into flesh, and all of my physical and spiritual being - heart, and soul, and mind, - was surging through these 10 points of contact. I was trying literally to squeeze the Holy Spirit out of my fingertips into these new deacons.

And, I believe, the whole apostolic communion of saints, were squeezing with me.

Blessings.

Bus People

2008-02-12T06:00:00.000-08:00

I led a discussion last night about Hurricane Katrina with about 20 students from the University of Vermont and St. Michael's College. We are all going to New Orleans with Intervarsity during their spring break to do recovery work. In preparation we have been familiarizing ourselves with the Katrina story, and most especially the stories of those caught up in its path of destruction.

Last night's discussion centered around an article by Danny Duncan Collum which originally ran in Sojourner's Magagine last January. Collum writes about how fear gripped hold of our nation in the days following Katrina. He talked about all the misinformation that was put out - false reports about massive-scale raping and murdering in the Superdome, shots fired at rescue helicopters, etc.

I remember hearing all those reports. And I remember believing them too.

Irie and I were in Houston at the time, visiting a friend's church. As the initial platforms of evacuation - the Superdome, the Alamodome, the Astrodome, etc. - began to overflow with Katrina evacuees, many smaller facilities began opening up as official Red Cross evacuation centers. The church we were visiting was one of them.

The church's gymn was converted into a temporary dormitory. Cots were brought in, a triage medical clinic was set up, and a large breakout room was filled with all kinds of donated toiletry items. There was toothpaste, soap, deodorant, and lots and lots of hair products. I will never forget what Irie said after taking a look at all the hair products that had been collected. "Those are white people's shampoos and hair brushes. They are NOT going to work for the people who are coming to stay here."

The first night there we heard from the area Red Cross disaster response coordinator that a busload of people were coming from the Astrodome. She counseled us to be on our guard because of all the reports that were coming out. Red Cross volunteers then began training us in how to search people for weapons. No one came in without being searched. Red Cross policy.

That night a lot of people stood around and waited for a mass influx of people that never came. Only a few carloads trickled in. Since they had heard the same reports about how unsafe the evacuee centers were, they were not eager to stay. They came in, took toothpaste and deodorant, passed on the hair products, then went on to the next town. Everyone wanted to get as far away from New Orleans as possible.

The next morning - a groggy one for a lot of folks who stayed up waiting - the official word came. More evacuees were on their way. And these, we were told, were going to be "bus people."

Bus people. I asked the students last night what that term implied. They were right on the mark. Bus People was a euphemism for a whole lot of things. Black. Poor. Dangerous. Desperate. Nothing to lose. Add all those things up and suddenly you have a word pregnant with a whole heck of a lot of force.

Over a hundred of us New Englanders will travel down to New Orleans in March. We will be taking busses. People will take one look at us when we roll into town and they will pick a name for us right off. They will call us college kids, and missionaries, and Christians, and do-gooderers, and patronizing, and pure of heart. They will call us all kinds of things.

But they will not call us bus people. And I think we all ought to think about that.

The Boys of LHS Part III

2008-02-06T11:45:00.000-08:00

Last night I was sitting around a table with some friends and I shared a little about my faith journey. I told them that I caught my first glimpse of Jesus Christ at a Christian camp in 1993. I told them that I was basically blind-sided by Jesus that week. I signed up to for the girls, and the horseback riding, and the girls, and the rappelling, and the girls. Jesus wouldn't have broken into the top 1,000. In fact, I remember sitting by one of my high school friends Lauren Lowe the first night at dinner. Someone stood up to pray for the food. "Oh man," I said, "you mean this is a Christian camp?" Of course I knew it was a Christian camp, but Christians were anything but cool in my book, so I was playing dumb. For Lauren and any other girls that might be listening.

That's the thing about the Jesus I met that week. He is totally cool with the kids trying to be totally cool. Totally cool with the kids trying to be totally unchristian. In fact, for me, that was what great Young Life was all about - being totally cool with the worst kids in the school.

The boys of LHS who climbed aboard the bus with us in 1998 were not the worst kids in the school, but like me, they were definitely trying to be. Sagging pants, wife-beater shirts, foul tattoos, fouler language. They were a mess. I remember talking with a parent of some other kid who was going on the trip from some other high school. He is now mayor of Lubbock. A very honorable guy. Also a very conservative guy with a very Baptist hair cut. I was telling him how excited I was to be taking the kids we were taking from Lubbock High. "Some good kids then, huh?" he said, shaking his head as if he understood why I was so fired up. Obviously he had missed my point. "No, not very good kids at all," I said.

God wants to call the worst kids in the school, and those who want to be the worst kids in the school. If you don't get that you don't get Jesus. But no worries, there's hope for you too, because Jesus has also come to call the people who don't get Jesus.

It's pretty incredible, but a lot of the LHS boys who climbed aboard that greyhound that night had never been outside the Lubbock city limits. They had never had an opportunity to go on a real vacation. Never been outside their confined world. I kept telling people that. "The moment the bus john rolls past the Lubbock line these guys will be further from home than they have ever been."

I was proud. What I did not know, however, was that in a metaphorical, but much more profound sense, I was about to travel farther from my own home than I had ever been also.

Report from the NBC

2008-02-05T11:03:00.000-08:00

On Saturday I returned from my trip down to Atlanta for the New Baptist Covenant. The NBC was a meeting of Baptists from all across the theological, racial and geographical landscape. President Jimmy Carter, a life-long Baptist, convened the meeting and some 15,000 showed up in a united effort to say that in spite of all our differences there some common things about our faith that unite us. Those common things are expressed most clearly in Luke 4, the NBC's theme scripture, wherein Jesus stands up and basically says that God has annointed him to bring good news to poor and outcast folk.

There were some brilliant moments in the meeting's four days. There was some powerful black preaching that had me up on my feet talking back to the word of God. "Amen." "Alright." "Okay now." After James Forbes preached on Friday I turned to the white guy from Indiana and asked him if they preach like that in the Midwest. "Not like that." Forbes's Bible might still be hot.

Other notables.

Tony Campolo, one of my evangelical heroes, preached in pictures. Parables of the Kingdom where some say yes and some say no to the claim of God on our lives. I was especially interested in his bold criticism of one of his former students who is out there somewhere doing boob jobs and tummy tucks for the materially consumed.

John Grisham, the author, spoke. I know, who knew he was Baptist? But man, that is a layman who knows why he is a Baptist. He called us to civility and inclusion. And he called us to get out of politics - atleast the kind of politics that co-opt the church into the red state blue state junk.

And there was the rub that made me feel a little out of place all week. Jimmy Carter convened this thing and I think most sane Baptists have all along felt he is a man of sincere faith. I was very happy to hear what he had to say and felt it was full of the wisdom of a man of God. He called us to quit letting non-essentials divide us. He explicitly named our varying beliefs about the inerrancy of scripture, or the place of women in the church, or the practice of homosexuality, and said they were non-issues, much like the issues of circumcision in the early church. Basically he was calling for us to start focusing on what we share in common, our central faith in the Lord Jesus Christ - which he said is in the end the only thing. Everything else is distracting us from our call to proclaim the Gospel into the world. On the last night of the gathering President Carter shared his own story and talked about how it was that simple, central faith that he saw demonstrated in an uneducated, small-time preacher from Brooklyn, that changed his life.

I heard Christ speaking in President Carter.

I heard Christ speaking in President Clinton also, but was less settled about his presence there. President Clinton spoke as if speaking to friends wounded from some common battle. In other words, in spite of the large number of black and Northern Baptists gathered, he seemed to be speaking to those who felt hurt by the strong dogmatic and authoritarian turn of the Southern Baptist Convention. His counsel was pastoral, encouraging meekness and humility when we come into disagreement. He impressed upon us our need to remember that we all see through a glass darkly and we are all trying to do what we feel in our hearts is right.

The message was clear and timely and I very much appreciated President Clinton's humility that night. Yet, and this goes back to what Grisham said, I couldn't help but think that it was a mistake to have so many political figures speaking. It really wasn't the fact that any one of them should not have been there, but all of them should not have been there together. It was just too much. And, given the fact that the two most prominent Republicans invited, Mike Huckabee and Lindsay Graham, ended up backing out after agreeing to come, the whole thing ended up being way too heavy with Democrats.

Look, here I inject my personal opinion, if there is going to be a pan-Baptist movement that is seriously going to do things to proclaim the Gospel to lost, hurting, poor, outcast, and imprisoned people, then it is not going to come from former Presidents and old veterans of the Southern Baptist Convention war. Instead it is going to come from new names in Baptist life like Ben Cole, Sarah Jobe, Michael-Ray Matthews, and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. If you are a Baptist with an interest in the next 40 years then learn who these people are. They are the next generation.

Perks:

I have never been to a black church conference and was very surprised to see that one of the large convention halls was turned into a market. Now most of the places I have been to will provide space for vendors to sell Christian books and maybe some religious artwork and crafts, and perhaps even stoles and robes. But down in Atlanta they were selling suits. Now part of me thought Well, they're doing something positive for the the black community by inviting black businesses to come in. It is a kind of counter-cultural economy. I have to say, however, that something set uneasy in my soul when I saw all the glitz and glamor. There's a fine line and this market was awfully close, if not beyond.

But here was the perk. I got my shoes shined at this thing and I have to say that the lady did my dogs right. I mean to tell you, she raised Lazarus. And I don't even know if James Forbes could have done that.

The Boys of LHS Part II

2008-01-28T13:47:00.000-08:00

When I was in divinity school I served as a chaplain at a small neighborhood ministry program just off East Campus in Durham. Time was a crazy thing there. By that I mean, the whole concept of time was totally different from the concept of time just a couple of blocks away at Duke. People would walk into our storefront ministry and ask if we gave rides to doctor's appointments. "Sure we give rides. Just tell us when you need to be there and you can meet us here and then we'll give you a ride to wherever you need to go." Then the time warp. "Well I was wondering if you could take me now; my appointment was 30 minutes ago."

If you aren't expecting it that time warp in poor communities can be tremendously frustrating. Yet it can sometimes be incredibly liberating as well. In fact, sometimes it can be the kind of thing that can change the whole course of your life and ministry. That's what happened for me at LHS anyway.

Under most circumstances, if you are going to take a group of kids to a camp in Colorado you really need to have pretty much everything squared away a couple of months out. That just makes sense. It definitely made sense at Coronado because parents want details and, perhaps more to the point, kids at Coronado have options. If you don't catch them early they'll be headed somewhere else that week. Tennis camp or Jazz Camp or the lakehouse. They have options and they have schedules.

But not the boys I met in the spring of 1998 anyway.

Here they are, in a totally cribbed shot from Glenn Austell (please disregard the chubby-cheeked Sooners fan in the corner), the boys of LHS.

We were no kidding only about three weeks from boarding a bus to go to summer camp when Lance Dillard, another member of the LHS Young Life team, and I just started going crazy asking any kids we saw if they wanted to go to Colorado with us. I mean we were totally reckless, casting our seed left and right. "Hey, you play football right?" "Yeah." "Hey, I saw you play. You're good. Do you want to go to Colorado?"

Now do you see my point about time? Who are the kids who are going to say yes to this kind of madness? Only the kids who have the time. In other words, only the poor kids.

There is something very biblical about that. Jesus is taking everyone to summer camp, but the only ones who are able to go are the ones who aren't going to tennis camp. The ones who don't have a father to bury. The ones who have nothing . . . nothing but time.

The Boys of LHS Part I

2008-01-24T12:12:00.000-08:00

My first ministry experience was in college with Young Life, an evangelical organization geared minister to unchurched high school kids. I became a Christian through Young Life and so by the time I got into college I wanted to do what others did for me. I wanted to tell lost kids about Jesus. After jumping through all the hoops I was officially assigned to my Young Life team. I had been placed at Lubbock High School.

Now I gotta say that Young Life in my high school, Coronado, was pretty white bread. There were lots of rich white kids there and Young Life pretty much reflected that. Rich white kids with nice cars show up for a skit, some songs - including the obligatory "Brown Eyed Girl" - and then a talk about how all the stuff in our lives isn't enough to make us happy. Somebody would say something like, "There is a giant God-shaped void in your life and you can't fill it with anything or anyone else," which has pretty much been true ever since Pascal said it. After Pascal everyone would then stand up and sing "Light the Fire" and go home. Vintage Young Life. And I loved it.

But then I got assigned to the team at Lubbock High School and Young Life changed. I would even say God changed, or better, my whole idea about God changed.

LHS was anything but white bread. Sure they had their fair share of white kids walking the halls - about 40% in fact - but these white kids were not the same kind of white kids rolling around Coronado. They were smart and they were into music - often their own music - and they had heard of other colleges besides Texas Tech. So they were weird. Then there was another 40% of LHS kids who were latino. Out of ignorance we called them Mexican, and some of them may have been. Then there were the black kids. About seven percent. The rest of the school was "other."

So you see my dillema. Freaks, Geeks, Mexicans, Blacks, and others? Come on. Who was I going to connect with? Who in that group would want to join arms and sing "Brown Eyed Girl"?

"There must be some mistake, I ordered my sandwich on white bread."

The area director for Young Life tried to cheer me up with an eye of the tiger pep talk. He told me I had been assigned to LHS because I wasn't a quitter. He said something about only the tough surviving ministry at LHS. In other words, he was basically saying they assigned me to LHS, not because they thought I would necessarily do well, but because they thought I might actually be willing to die trying.

I did not die of course, but over the next two years of ministry at LHS I did give my life away. That is to say I gave away the person I was and became someone entirely different.

The Particulars of Ministry

2008-01-17T19:35:00.000-08:00

At the suggestion of Kyle Childress, pastor of Austin Heights Baptist Church in Nacodoches, Texas, I've been reading Garret Keizer's book A Dresser of Sycamore Trees. It is a memoir of a lay Episcopal minister's journey with a small congregation in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. I'd really like some of my Vermont readers to tell me why the heck it took two years and a preacher from Texas to put me on to this book. I mean, come on people!

I'm enjoying the read. It is at times a little gushy and too liberal with words, but I am finding that Keizer's attention to the particulars of ministry is full of insight into the subtle and sometimes hidden forms grace takes in our lives. I suppose that pretty well somes up the art of the spiritual life - opening the eyes to see Christ in the most particular and inauspicious of encounters. Page one in Keizer's book says it all. He's talking about coming back from a visit with a parishioner's home. As he drives his mind floods with subtle images of the visit and suddenly becomes aware of how mercifully connected his life and the life of his parishioners are with all the rest of this God blessed world. In other words, he remembers:

The image of an old woman taking the wafer reverently in arthritic hands overwhelms me as I round a mountain and the full moon appears blessing the branches of a great dead elm. The ionosphere has come down in the night, like St. Peter's visionary sheetful of clean and unclean animals, and my car radio isa feast of stations . . . I give thanks for my family, my church, the Supremes. Next week, without fail, I will stop at the farm which it is too late to visit now, but passing by I pray for the family who live there. I pray for their cows and the land. And I tell myself by way of exultation what I now tell my reader by way of warning, it won't get much better than this.

It won't get much better because being alive to the subtle sacraments of life, those crevices through which heaven's light breaks in, is what life and ministry and Keizer's book are about. It doesn't get much better than that because that's pretty much the best life has to offer anyway.

I listened to Ken Burns give an address tonight and he pretty much said the same thing. He said the way he goes about history is to look for the universal through the insights of the particular. He even used religious imagery. "What is true below, is true above," he said. Then he quoted Blake who wrote of seeing "the world in a grain of sand." And, of course, Blake got that from a certain Jewish rabbi who talked of seeing the kingdom of God in a mustard seed.

Our world is addicted to dazzle. If it doesn't blow our socks off then it isn't worth it. If it doesn't blow our socks off then we'll never even notice it.

But the kingdom of God . . .the kingdom of God is among us. Hidden, like a treasure in the field. Hidden in the tiniest of particular acts, where God speaks in subtle whispers. Tiny whispers that only those with ears to hear can discern.

Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to try and write about a few of those tiny acts that I have been graced to be a part of. Pray for me, that like Keizer, I too will remember well.

Getting Gas

2008-01-16T07:55:00.000-08:00

I haven't been a good blogger lately. I've been really distracted by a lot of stuff and, frankly, have been on E ever since I returned from the break.

When I was 21 my grandparents picked me up in Colorado, where I was spending the summer guiding backpacking trips, and we drove to see my uncle and aunt in Cody, Wyoming. My grandparents bickered almost the whole way there and all the way back and so most of the ride was sort of colored by their domestic complications.

But one other thing from the ride stands out also. My grandfather never let the fuel get lower than half a tank. "Remember this Ryon," he said, as if about to pass on some very important key to life, "you can go just as far on full tank of gas as you can on a half."

It was his dry, riddling cowboy way of saying, "Get gas while you still can."

I suppose that's the point of keeping Sabbath. Getting gas while we still can before we run so completely dry that we can't make it another mile.

On Being Seen at South Plains Mall

2008-01-02T10:26:00.000-08:00

A couple of days after Christmas Irie and I took some of the money we got from my family and went down to Dillard’s department store for shoes. Dillard's is in South Plains Mall, and my favorite hangout from sixth through eighth grades. I loved it because there was no telling who you might run into there. It was all about seeing and being seen. Plus, SPM holds the unsubstantiated claim to being the world's largest one story shopping mall, which really doesn't make sense since a lot of stores there have more than one story. But anyway:

The lady who waited on us at Dillard's was real cordial but I could tell we interested her a great deal. As we were paying out she finally had to ask. “Where are ya’ll from,” she said. I told her that I was born in Lubbock but that we live in Vermont now.

Now most people when you tell them where you live will ask how you like it, what the people are like and so forth. Not this lady. When I told her we live in Vermont her immediate response was, “Don’t ya’ll just want to get back to Texas?”

“Well, not really,” I said.

“You don’t?”

The idea that life might actually exist beyond the Arkansas River seemed unbelievable to this woman. The chat continued on. She asked what I do in Vermont. I told her I am an American Baptist pastor. She had never heard of American Baptists.

“Is that like Southern Baptist?” she asked.

“Yeah, sort of,” I said.

She seemed incredulous.

“Same God? Same Jesus?”

“Yes, same God. Same Jesus.”

I read her eyes. They were saying, “Mr., are you telling me that not all Christians are Texans?” I was telling her even more than that. I was telling her not even all Baptists are Texans.

This news had her flipping out. Overcome with joy at just the thought of it all.

As we were leaving she yelled after us. “We’ll see each other again!”

Irie and I made our way past cosmetics and through the juniors section toward the door and then ran right into my high school girlfriend. She and Irie had not met and things were a little surreal for a second.

None of us had imagined seeing each other with sweat suits on and sneaker boxes in hand. No one had a chance to look in the mirror or put on high heels. We were all just us and perhaps that was life's way of saying that everything is okay now, there is no need for pretense.

And there wasn't any need for pretense because everything was okay. After the nerves wore off for us all we talked about marriage and kids. She said her dad is sick with cancer. I said I was sorry to hear that and I was.

It was brief, but meaningful. Almost sacramental. I left Dillard's with the knowledge that God is redeeming us all, and certain that what the shoe lady said was Gospel truth:

We will all some day see each other again.

With a little help from. . .

2007-12-24T19:12:00.000-08:00

Last week the oldest member of our church turned 95. I went over and saw him. He is still as sharp as a tack and rye as Irish whiskey.

"Ninety-five," I said, "You know, Abraham had a child at a hundred."

"Yeah," he said, "and he might of had a little help too."

I almost fell out of my chair. "Well, that's not quite the orthodox understanding of the story, but that is about the funniest thing I've ever heard," I said.

But I got to thinking about that. Wait a minute. He was exactly right. What he said was entirely orthodox. Abraham had a little help. In fact, he had a lot of help.

And I suppose that is the whole meaning of this story we are living into over these next few hours. We needed help. And God gave us a child.

Letting Tony Speak

2007-12-24T11:38:00.000-08:00

You know that I was born to be a preacher because I actually like to listen to sermons. I’m hopeless I know. Sometimes I go to St. Mike’s where they have really fast internet connection, and I log in under my wife’s name and I just sit back and watch three or four sermons in a row.

A couple of weeks ago I was there listening to a guy named Tony Campolo preach. He was preaching at my alma mater Duke University and on vocational discernment Sunday there at Duke Chapel. He was telling all those Dukies how they ought not to waste their lives. He was telling them that the world tells them to go to school so they can get a good ____ so they can make a lot of _____ so they can buy a lot of ______. I’m listening to this sermon and I look around and notice that I’m surrounded by college students who are all studying for finals so they can get out and get a good job and make a lot of money and buy a lot of stuff. So I think, Man, I’m need to pray for these cats. So I start praying for everyone in the room as I continue listening. And then I hear Tony tell a story. He used to be a college professor and he had one young student come up to him and tell him how proud she was because out of like 90 candidates she had landed this job. Tony heard that and looked that girl right in the eyes, and said, “That’s terrible. Why go somewhere you’re not needed when you could go somewhere you’re desperately needed? He told her last year there were something like 200 teacher vacancies in the city of Philadelphia alone why not go there and make a difference instead of going somewhere else to make a dollar?

So as I’m listening to this and looking at all these college kids surrounding me my heart starts pounding and I decide its not enough for me to pray for them; they gotta here this. It’s dead quiet in the computer cluster so I hit the volume button all the way up and then bring it back down like I’m having technical difficulties. But the truth is I’m trying to get their attention. Then, having gotten their attention, I start bringing that volume back real slow like and I start letting Tony preach to these people. And one girl keeps looking over at me. And I know she’s not studying to make a lot of money but wants to become a librarian, because she keeps giving me that irritated librarian face. “SSHH.”

Patron Saint

2007-12-13T13:52:00.000-08:00

On Thanksgiving I obscurely gave thanks for the Rev. A. Ritchie Low. Here's why:

Most Baptists don't have patron saints, but maybe that is because they just haven't found there's yet.

I've found mine. His name is Rev. A. Ritchie Low.

I discovered Ritchie Low when I was researching former ministers of the church where I am now pastor. There were funny stories about a number of ministers - one whose "sermons were hortatory" but who was better remembered for his wife's culinary skills, his love of a fast horse and the "glop of a clambake he proposed." The story on Ritchie Low, pastor of the United Church of Colchester from 1927-1933, was equally anecdotal, replete with stories of erratic and dangerous driving through the backroads of rural Vermont.

The usual stuff you find in church histories. Nothing to get too excited about. But then this one line stuck out. During his tenure he "began working out plans for interracial fellowship at the child level." Plans for interracial fellowship in the early 30s? In Colchester, Vermont of all places?

When I was installed as pastor I told the congregation that I had no idea what interracial fellowship at the child level would have meant in this part of the country at that time. But, I said, "one of these days my wife Irie and I are going to have a child, and Ritchie Low's plans will come to fruition. You will have interracial fellowship a the child level every Sunday." We do now. On March 28 of last year Irie and I had our first child, Gabrielle Zipporah Price, the bi-racial child of a white man and a black woman.

If the story had ended there it would have been a pretty good one. But it didn't end there and is now becoming a great story.

I put Ritchie Low on the backburner for about a year but not long ago I was reading a history of race relations in Vermont and lo and behold there is a minister from the United Church of Johnson, VT who in the 1930s helped to integrate the major downtown Burlington, VT hotel. I knew then there is a story that needed to be told about Ritchie Low.

In 1943 Rev. Low traveled from Johnson, VT down to Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. There he stayed in the home of Adam Clayton, Powell, Jr. and upon his return began the Vermont-Harlem Project which would bring over 100 Harlem children to Vermont during the summers of 1943 and 44. This was a project aimed explicitly at bringing blacks and whites together. In an article in the 1946 summer issue of Common Ground Rev. Low wrote:

These were not underprivileged boys and girls in the usual sense of the word. They were coming as representatives of the thirteen million colored people of America. They were coming as friends, as ambassadors of goodwill. They were coming to the Green Mountains so that we might get to know them and, through them, their race.

The Harlem-Vermont Project made headlines throughout the nation and brought Rev. Low considerable attention. One quote from a Time Magazine article from August 28, 1944 was especially prescient for the day: "The Negro is not a problem to be solved but a human being to be understood."

Rev. Low continued his work at improving race relations in America before his untimely death on Christmas Eve 1948. He even traveled to the South as a part of a vanguard of civil rights activists, gathering information and encouraging blacks to organize for equality. In an article he wrote for the Christian Century titled "Zigzagging through Dixie" he wrote of the trouble he caused when he decided to sit at with the blacks on the back of the bus in Savannah. In that article he also described the inherent disparities between blacks and whites in the Jim Crow South.

I have to confess that I feel very connected to the Rev. Ritchie Low in a very mystical kind of way. Two white pastors, the same small Vermont church, both our lives surprisingly bound up with the story of race in America. The world outside the church would call it ironic. But inside the church we have an even better term for it I think. The communion of saints. That sounds right even to my Baptist ears. Perhaps it should not be too much of a surprise that Rev. Low began his tenure here at the United Church of Colchester on the first day of November - All Saints Day.

The thing is almost nobody has ever heard of Ritchie Low or the United Churches of Johnson and Colchester. And that's perhaps the whole point of the story. A guy from nowhere Vermont does some seemingly small, hidden act and it helps to change the world. It helps to change the way whites and blacks think about each other. It helps to change the laws so that a white man like me and a black woman like Irie can marry each other in the South. And it helps to change America so that wherever we bring our daughter Gabrielle there is interracial fellowship at the child level.

Amen.

Putting the (other) B in Baptist

2007-12-12T10:22:00.000-08:00

When I was installed as pastor I asked one of the church pillars to say a few words. He told those gathered that I was teaching the congregation how to say Baptist like a Texan.

"Babtist," he said.

I didn't get it.

"Babtist," he said again.

Everyone was laughing, but I had no idea what was going on.

Finally he clued me in. "BaBtist. You say it with two Bs."

Things finally made sense for me a couple of weeks ago when I received a letter from my uncle down in Texas. The letter was addressed to:

The United Babtist Church

You can't make this stuff up.

Oh well, I borrowed a line from Stanley Hauerwas last Sunday and told the church that I'm proud of my accent. It is like my bellybutton; it reminds me that I came from somewhere.

Baptist and Blogger Part VII

2007-12-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

Gil Gulick, a third year student at Wake Forest Divinity School is doing research on Baptist bloggers and the role of the blog in 21st century Baptist life. He solicited my help. I thought I would share my answers to his questions here with you. I think something profound is happening with blogs and I would be interested to read what Gil arrives at.

I'll do this in a series of installments. This is the seventh and final installment.

7. Historically, Baptists have been a people of dissent. How does blogging
fit into this idea and the Baptist idea of priesthood of the believer?

Like I said, this is a thoroughly democratized medium. Greg Horton of theparish is a great example of a guy who is writing honestly about faith and the struggle to live fully into Christ's claim on our lives. Greg probably wouldn't last very long in most traditional pulpits but his blog gives him a platform for all sorts of unchurched and outchurched folks to come and wrestle with God over his words. Blogs offer a counter to the neo-clericalism of our day which tries to determine who can and can't say something. If Roger Williams were alive today Rhode Island would be a blog. Heck, maybe it is. I'll Google that and see.

How This Plane and Ronald Reagan's Death Saved My Life (a non-substitutionary theory of atonement)

2007-12-07T12:52:00.000-08:00

This is an excerpt from an email I recently wrote to a pastor I know in Texas. He is coming to Andover Newton in April to share thoughts about the future of preaching. He asked me to share some of my thoughts on the future of this calling and below is a portion of what I gave him.

As a nod to Stanley let me tell you my story. I graduated from Duke set on law school. I graduated with an MDiv but persuaded everyone at the local bar that I was studying "theology". That sounded vague, non-committal, and was served up nicely along with the third round of drinks. I could be anyone I pleased so long as Christianity was something I merely flirted with. A dilletante. Form but no soul.

So I moved to Washington, DC that summer because I landed a job interning for a congressman from my home district. And then Ronald Reagan died, which is actually strangely important to my story. Ronald Reagan died and all the dignitaries were flying in from all over the country and world, and one of them was the governor of Kentucky. He was flying in and somehow his private jet lost contact with the tower and ended up flying into protected airspace. The Capitol alarms went crazy and one of the staffers grabbed the emergency pack full of tylenol and bandaids and anti-anthrax syrum or whatever is in there and we were all off. Running down First St. trying to get as far away from the Capitol as possible because the #$%@ was about to hit the dome.

And that's when it all became clear. That's when Stanley through Yoder through Curtis Freeman all made sense. And it was terrifying. It was terrifying because I realized that I am baptized and because I am baptized my life is not my own and because my life is not my own I didn't want to die doing something I really didn't believe in.

So that's when I called back to North Carolina and I asked to have my youth director back at podunk, nobody ever heard of it, Lowe's Grove Baptist Church. Youth director! Not even minister of youth. Not even youth pastor. Youth director! And then I went back and Lord have mercy I moved in with an octogenarian from that church. An eighty something year old man with wax in his ears and dreams of his deceased wife at night.

And you know what God said, "It is good. It is very good."

Baptist and Blogger Part VI

2007-12-06T15:48:00.001-08:00

Judas Iscariot

2007-12-01T08:52:00.000-08:00

April Deconick, professor of Biblical Studies at Rice University, has a very provocative op-ed piece on the Gospel of Judas in today's New York Times.

Last year the National Geographic Society said they had found and translated the 3rd century book and - much to people's shock and others' delight - the story had Jesus inducing his betrayal by Judas. Deconick, however, says that was all wrong. She says that the National Geographic Society's translators consistently made some very errant choices in translation which ended in that interpretation. An example: The Greek word "daimon" is usually translated demon into English. But Deconick says the translators instead made the unusual decision to intepret the word daimon as spirit in reference to Judas.

I suspect the debate will go on for years about what is the right reading of the Gospel of Judas. But Deconick makes a solid point when she questions National Geographic Society's choice not to open up discussion of the text more fully before they printed their article last year.

Deconik posits that perhaps the interpretive choices were inspired by a desire to reconcile Christians and Jews. Throughout the centuries Christians have wrongly painted Judas as an allegorical figure for the entire Jewish nation. Deconick suggests that in order to challenge the antisemitic reading of Judas,the National Geographic Society translators might have been too willing to problematize the Judas character.

If Deconik is right about the errant interpretative decisions I think there are less noble motives at work. In this new age of journalism even a respectable journal like National Geographic is under increasing pressure to get readers. Nothing gets readers like salacious stories that challenge the orthodox story of Judas' betrayal.

But here is the thing. It doesn't really matter if this good Judas myth began in the 1st or 3rd or 21st century. Both the orthodox and apocryphal gospels have Jesus knowing that he is going to be betrayed by Judas. And if there is betrayal then there is violation of trust. And that's why when Jesus said to Judas, "Do what you are going to do," there must have been a terrible sadness in his heart. For Judas and for all of us.

Baptist & Blogger Part V

2007-11-28T11:22:00.001-08:00

Gil Gulick, a third year student at Wake Forest Divinity School is doing research on Baptist bloggers and the role of the blog in 21st century Baptist life. He solicited my help. I thought I would share my answers to his questions here with you. I think something profound is happening with blogs and I would be interested to read what Gil arrives at.

I'll do this in a series of installments. This is the fifth installment.

5. What, if any, opposition have you encountered to your blogging?

I think that some people are just wired to come looking at your blog for evidence. They're like the forensics team. If they think you did something, they come looking for evidence. I once interviewed for a youth ministry position down in Texas. Word got back to me that one of the people read my blog and didn't like what he saw. But the truth is he met me and didn't like what he saw, then he went to my blog to justify his reasoning. In seminary we called it proof texting.

Baptist & Blogger Part IV

2007-11-27T05:54:00.000-08:00

Gil Gulick, a third year student at Wake Forest Divinity School is doing research on Baptist bloggers and the role of the blog in 21st century Baptist life. He solicited my help. I thought I would share my answers to his questions here with you. I think something profound is happening with blogs and I would be interested to read what Gil arrives at.

I'll do this in a series of installments. This is the fourth installment.

4. What are the positives and negatives of blogging?

I think the most positive thing is that this is a thoroughly democratized medium. If you write well and connect with people at a soul level then you will get discovered. The cream naturally rises to the top in the blogosphere.

The downside is that in this medium you really do need to write a lot. There's no room for sometimes bloggers. This means a lot of ideas aren't as fleshed out as they deserve to be. It also means that some ideas that ought never to be seen by anyone make their way into perpetuity. Thomas Merton and his editors would be appalled.

Having the poor with us - ie, Jesus' words are for me

2007-11-26T10:25:00.000-08:00

I said something in my last post about using Jesus' words about always having the poor with us. I called it a cop out.

It's actually more than that even. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of the context in which Jesus spoke those words.

A woman came to anoint Jesus with alabaster. Some of the disciples grumbled. "We could have sold that and given it to the poor." What the disciples don't get - because they can't get it through their skulls that the Messiah is going to be killed - is that this is a burial annointing. Jesus corrects them. "The poor you will always have with you, but not me."

Most of those around the table would have heard that and known that Jesus was putting a twist on Deuteronomy 15. "...there will, however, be no poor among you, because the Lord is sure to bless you in the land that the Lord of God is giving you...if only you will obey the Lord your God..." In his book Jesus, Justice, and the Reign of God Bill Herzog says that the only logical conclusion we can draw from Jesus' statement is that poverty exists among us because people don't obey God. Herzog writes, "Far from being a saying about the prevalence of the poor, it is a wry saying about the omnipresence of oppression and explotation." We always have the poor among us because in a game of winners there are going to be losers.

But here's where things hit home for me. When Jesus says you can always give to the poor he ain't talking to the Herods of this earth. He's talking to a bunch scruffy-faced, corn-footed, fishermen-turned-itinerate-preachers. And that's the rub for us not destitute but definitely not rich folks. We do always have an abundance out of which we could give to the poor.

That's why I'm taking one of my extra snow coat to JUMP today. Because Jesus' words are for me.

Problematizing "Help"

2007-11-25T16:29:00.000-08:00

I find this article about foodbanks in the US from the Washington Post at the breadblog.

The article raises all kinds of provocative questions about the way we go about combating hunger here in America. You read something like this and you are to grow pessimistic and write off doing anything with cop out of the ages - "Afterall, Jesus said we'd always have the poor with us."

Here's the thing. We're not going to solve hunger by building more food pantries (though we may need more food pantries to help stop the bleeding). What we really need to do every Thanksgiving is start introducing all those good folks who come downtown to help serve the poor to John. By John I mean the poor guy at the table who actually has a name and a story. Instead of just doling out a 1/8 scoop of stuffing on John's table, those good-hearted volunteers ought to be challenged to start sharing in his story.

That's why I love what Hal Colston is doing with Neighborkeepers here in Vermont. Hal is trying to connect people to people, because in the end it is going to be relationships that help people get people out of poverty.

Baptist & Blogger Part III

2007-11-25T16:10:00.000-08:00

Gil Gulick, a third year student at Wake Forest Divinity School is doing research on Baptist bloggers and the role of the blog in 21st century Baptist life. He solicited my help. I thought I would share my answers to his questions here with you. I think something profound is happening with blogs and I would be interested to read what Gil arrives at.

I'll do this in a series of installments. This is the third insallment.

3. What do you think the biggest impact of your blog has been?

Two things. First, through my own story I've been able to invite a lot of white religious folk who don't normally think about race to begin doing so - especially in the context of what Jesus has done and is doing to reconcile the world.

Second, I've been able to connect with a lot of secular folks and offer them a picture of Jesus that is open-minded, yet viscerally compelling. For example, just last week Philip Baruth of vermontdailybriefing discovered that I had linked to his blog. He looked me up and then interviewed me on his blog. Pretty cool. Beyond all the crap we see coming from the mouths of too many churchpeople, the essential message is powerful enough to change our hearts and our world - there is more life in Jesus Christ than there is death in us. I consider it a real privelege to share that news here with whatever stranger cares to listen.

Baptist & Blogger Part II

2007-11-24T07:20:00.001-08:00

Gil Gulick, a third year student at Wake Forest Divinity School is doing research on Baptist bloggers and the role of the blog in 21st century Baptist life. He solicited my help. I thought I would share my answers to his questions here with you. I think something profound is happening with blogs and I would be interested to read what Gil arrives at.

I'll do this in a series of installments. This is the second installment.

2. If you are a pastor of a church, how has your congregation responded to your blog?

I don't get a lot of feedback from parishioners. I know I have some lurkers from among my congregation but most of the people who read my blog are from elsewhere. It is a kind of second pulpit for me. I get to be pastor for a lot of people from my past and some folks I've never even met before. It's a kind of communing of saints beyond time and space. Nevertheless, I recognize that what I say at fromthewilderness does not belong to me alone. I am a pastor of a church and don't have the luxury of taking that hat off to speak as someone unconnected to the Body of Christ. So I'm careful.

Giving Thanks

2007-11-22T18:39:00.000-08:00

What I am giving thanks for today:

1. Kindred Spirits with which to travel
2. Unkindred Spirits to teach me about hospitality
3. Irie & Gabs & the gift of love which, if not a proof, is at least a strong sign that God exists
4. A. Ritiche Low & other unsung saints who have traveled before us and changed the world in small but very meaningful ways
5. the mariacchi band that played at our wedding reception
6. the grace to write meaningfully
7. completion

Baptist & Blogger Part I

2007-11-20T10:23:00.000-08:00

Gil Gulick, a third year student at Wake Forest Divinity School is doing research on Baptist bloggers and the role of the blog in 21st century Baptist life. He solicited my help. I thought I would share my answers to his questions here with you. I think something profound is happening with blogs and I would be interested to read what Gil arrives at.

I'll do this in a series of installments.

1. When did you start blogging and why?

I began blogging in 2005 right when reallivepreacher was being unmasked. I read his blog a lot and found the level of candor and depth with which he was writing to be really inspiring. I had graduated from divinity school a year before and was serving as a youth minister at a small Baptist church. The conversations I was having with my youth group were good, but I was longing for more. Plus, I had always enjoyed the heck out of writing and was looking for a forum to get some of my thoughts out into the public space. The religious writing world has high walls you have to scale - like pastoring a church of some significant size or name. Blogging was my way of sneaking through the backdoor. That may sound arrogant or pretentious - I have something to say that people ought to hear - but I don't think so. God created me to tell stories. I wouldn't be happy doing anything else.

White on Black

2007-11-19T10:18:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Irie and I pulled out of the driveway and much to our surprise saw police officers walking up and down our street, some of them taking pictures. They were gathering evidence. Under the cover of darkness someone had taken a can of spray paint and used it to graffiti several hateful words and pictures on various parts of our block. The city of Winooski just repaved our street last month so the symbolism of the bold white paint burned into the black asphault of Hickok St. was unmistakable. The N-Word. Then two doors down from that more hatred. "Kill all Bosnians". At first I just shook my head in sadness. Then, after fifteen or twenty seconds my belly literally started to turn hot. It was as if all the evil and hate of those words had entered my body, settled down into the pit of my stomach and then brewed. I began to fume. I drove around the block three times, looking for someone with a guilty grin. I wanted to beat the hell out of someone.

And then after a little while I remembered that you can't beat the hell out of anyone. You have to love the hell out of them. Which is the hardest thing to do in the world.

This coming Sunday the lectionary reading is from the twenty-third chapter of Saint Luke. I don't know if a word from God has ever spoke more timely or meaningfully or directly to me. "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

That is my prayer. I ask all those who read this to pray it with me. Pray it for me.

The thing that sickens and saddens me the most is that as I am reading this trash the first thing I think of is my Gabs all settled in innocently in the backseat without the feintest idea of the kind of world that she has been born into. The kind of world we chose to bring her into. I am so sorry for that and wish that I could protect her. But I can't. I can only do what I did tonight. I took her into my arms and bless her eyes for the things she will see.

The Sitter Routine

2007-11-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

Two Mondays ago we had a babysitter come over. As soon as she got there I went about the usual routine of showing her around the house. I did the usual things you would expect. I showed her the milk in the fridge, the changing table upstairs, and the basket where all the toys are. Gabby can be pretty fussy when mom and dad are gone, so I shared with her a secret one of our babysitters tried. Gabby was crying inconsolably and the babysitter decided to try and fool Gabby into thinking one of either mom or dad was really there. Because the babysitter was white, she thought it would be impossible to fool Gabby into thinking Irie was home, so she decided to dress up like me. “So,” I told this babysitter, “if you get desperate here is where I keep my jackets and hat.”

After all those preliminary details, I finally came to the serious stuff. “In case of emergency,” I said, “here are all our contact numbers, and here is my cell phone you can feel free to use at any time, and here, mounted on the wall, is our fire extinguisher.” “Well, I hope Gabby won’t be setting any fires,” she said. “Well you never know,” I said, “she is a preacher’s kid after all.”

Philly 2

2007-11-13T17:45:00.000-08:00

We returned yesterday from our trip down to Philly. We had a great time hanging out in the city with my sister Brooke. "Aunt Brooke" as I kept on calling her.

I said that we were going to worship at Central Baptist Church in Wayne. It turns out they are only about half a block down from the original Anthropology store. Brooke works at the Anthropology in Dallas and she was wanting to see the original store while in Philly. So here we were, thirty minutes outside of Philly and both of us were exactly where we wanted to be. A grace from God.

And then an even more amazing grace. I said in my last post that my relationship with Brooke was one with some baggage (which relationship isn't?). Part of the baggage was the fact that growing up Brooke lived beneath my shadow. I was good in school and athletics - two things valued in our house and in our community- while Brooke struggled to find her own unique gifts. It was the classic case of one sibling filling the refrigerator door with awards, accolades, etc. while the other sibling is made to often feel left out in the cold. The really great thing about the trip was this was Brooke's deal. She is making her own way in the world and finally discovering the unique gifts she has.

Anyway, we made our way to worship on Sunday at Central Baptist and Marcus Pomeroy, one of the pastors on staff there, preached a sermon about hope. There were three points (he said his sermons never have three points) and I have to admit I have already forgotten the first two. But the third point. That was all grace. It was about some friends of his who have struggled for fifteen or so years to bring up two children. And guess what...the first, their son, grew up the golden boy, filling the refrigerator with all his accolades and awards, while the second, their daughter, struggled to even make it out of high school. The point (the third point that is) was that Marcus' friends never gave up on their daughter, and this year she was honored with a certificate for outstanding academic achievement by her college. Finally, the mom said, the refigerator door was made complete.

Like I said, a grace.

Philly

2007-11-10T11:27:00.000-08:00

Irie, Gabs, and I are in Philly this weekend, visiting my sister. She lives in Dallas but has gone to Philly for work this week.

Growing up my sister and I had a pretty rocky relationship. I was a jerk. I confess. The dastardly thing is that one's jerk moves as kids tend to follow us into adulthood. As Faulkner said, the past is never behind us; it's not even past. Anyway, my sister and I are now adulthoods and letting old wounds heal.

One really great way for us to do that is by worshiping together. Tomorrow we will be at Central Baptist Church in Wayne, PA. I've heard they do church uniquely and I am excited to do it with them!

House of Worship

2007-11-07T17:58:00.001-08:00

For two years now I've been thinking how great it would be to get rid of the fixed pews in our sanctuary and replace thme with something more versatile. Some older churches have done that but it just ain't gonna happen at in our house. While getting rid of the pews might free us up to do some more creative things in the service, it would also rob us of a lot of the character. When you walk into our church you get a sense of the timelessness of what is done here. The bowing of heads. The bending of knees. The giving away in marriage. The giving away in burial. The New England Congregational house of worship may not be all that functional, but it is timeless for sure.

Besides, things could be a lot worse:

Last week Marc Fisher from the Washington Post wrote a stinging article about Third Church of Christ, Scientist in Washington, DC. District officials are moving to have the church declared a historic landmark while church members want to tear the church down and build something more functional. Apparently the government officials say the building has real architectural worth because it is a grand exhibit of "Brutalism".

Well, our pews are a little hard at times, but probably not altogether brutal - though a few of the sermons most certainly have been.

All Hallow's Eve 2007

2007-10-29T17:27:00.000-07:00

Holy God, we come to you today with a heart full of memory.
It weighs us down like water; it tastes like tears.
We see names and faces passing,
Some before our very eyes. Some before their time. Some before time itself.
Are they dead, Lord,
Or just sleeping?
Will we wake with them in the morning?
Will their eyes twinkle in the light of resurrection?
We pray.
We pray for tomorrow.

But tonight we are wet.
We cannot be dry
Because we have been caught up in this great cloud of witnesses.
They have their hands all over us.
Shaping us. Molding us. Transforming us into an image.
Of what?
Of a reality that is and is not,
Yet.

Holy God, help us to remember.
Not just our past,
But also our future.
As saints.

Life on the Fault Lines

2007-10-27T09:19:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday night Irie and I went to see a screening of the film Living on the Fault Line: Where Race and Family Meet. Living on the Fault Line documents the lives of several Vermont families and their experiences with transracial adoption. More specifically, it explores the racial "fault line" that is exposed when white parents adopt non-white children.

Jeff Farber, produced the film and hosted a conversation following the screening. What was clear from both the movie and his comments after is that he believes these mixed race families provide a unique opportunity for whites to explore the meaning of race and its powerful hold on our society. He also made it clear his belief that because whites so seldom have to think about race in a meaningful way, white parents who adopt non-white children are finding themselves woefully unprepared to help their children grow up as people of color in a world where race matters.

As a white person who has suddenly had to face race in a very intimate way, I agree that we are indeed ill-prepared to deal with race in a personal way. I remember waking up from our honeymoon in Durham and learning that three crosses had been burned downtown. Suddenly that wasn't about someone else anymore. Those crosses were burning me now. And yet I had no experience of being a racial outsider. No experience with what Cornel West in this month's Atlantic Monthly crudely (his word) calls "niggerization." I can only wonder how I will fare as a father of a bi-racial child as she matures and encounters this racialized world. As a person of faith, I am preparing myself now so that when Gabby comes home and tells me someone has said something racially malicious I won't go Old School on them but will remain true to Jesus' words.

And that, faith, is suppose what I've been thinking about most deeply since seeing the film. One of the parents in the film stated that she beleived her child's adoptive family was in actuality the third best option for her child. She said ideally her child would be with her biological family. Or, secondarily, with a family of her same race. I understood what that mother was was saying. Intellectually it made sense for sure. But I raised my hand during the discussion period and said that her statement sat ill with me somewhere down deep in my soul.

Soul was the right word. Because I am a person of faith, I simply cannot accept the assumption that biology or race or anything else is more definitive than the substance of love. The scriptures do not equate biology with God. They do not say that race is God. But the scriptures tell us that God is love.

The fault lines are real and they are dangerous. But if we believe that the power of love can indeed transcend the chasm from one heart to another and one people to another, then we will risk the danger. Which is I suppose what faith is all about.

Attachment Parenting

2007-10-23T16:58:00.001-07:00

So Irie and I have just moved into our new house in Winooski. Our house is small, but has character which we totally appreciate. Lots of nooks and crannies and unique molding etc. It very much fits the idea we have of ourselves.

At church on Sunday someone asked me how Gabs is liking her new bedroom. "New bedroom?" I said, "Well, she likes to visit it occasionally."

See, we have this little problem in our house. That is, according to some parenting experts we have a problem. At least the making of one. We have a kid that absolutely insists on sleeping with mommy and daddy.

And the really hard thing to admit, but I'm going to do it, is this: I think its so cute. Mommy, Daddy and Gabby all cuddled up together like three pigs in a blanket. Oink, oink, oink.

But the doomsday predicters say we are headed for trouble. My mom included. "It's cute now, but how cute will it be two years from now?" Apparently my mom thought it was cute and easy, etc. with me but I ended up staying around a couple of extra years. My mom and a whole army of child development experts say get this kid out of your bed ASAP. But then there's this minority group of pediatritians - the touchy, feely kind - who propound this thing called "attachment parenting". The basic premise of attachment parenting is the idea that children should be with their parents as often as possible. They say, don't listen to those with low anthropologies, children aren't trying to manipulate you, their just being children. Love them. Nurture them. Snore all over them. Too soon they'll be gone and if you don't you'll wish you did.

So what's a family to do? We've really been struggling with this. And then, out of the blue an answer from God...

I picked up the book of Luke and right there in chapter 11, in one of his parables, Jesus tells about a knock at midnight and on the other side of the door...that's right, an attachment family all snuggled in bed together.

A Bizarre Delusion

2007-10-18T11:30:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday I was flipping through the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual brushing up on a few pscychological terms that are currently en vogue. Obsessive comupulsive, passive aggressive, manic. I hear these phrases bandied about all the time but am not really quite sure what is meant. So I consulted the DSM, the handbook that names all the recognized mental disorders and their symptoms.

A word of caution. No one should pick up the DSM out of the blue unless certain of one's sanity. I mean infallibly certain. Otherwise, while perusing the innumerable pages of diagnostic material one is bound to come to the conclusion that he or she is hopelessly certifiable. An illustration from my Wednesday experience:

As I was flipping through the DSM I happened upon a certain disorder called Bizarre Delusion. Delusions are deemed bizarre if they are:
1) clearly implausible
2)not understandable
3)not derived from ordinary life experiences.

The example given by the DSM was an individual's belief that someone removed all his or her internal organs and replaced them with someone else's without leaving a stich of evidence.

But I was thinking about an individual's belief in the resurrection which is clearly implausible, not understandable, and certainly not derived from ordinary life experience. Suddenly, the words of Flannery O'Connor came to mind. "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd." Certifiably odd, I might add.

The other day I watched a keynote address James Lawson delivered at a dinner at Vanderbilt University last January. As a young Methodist minister Lawson was the one who trained all those students down in Nashville in the practice of non-violent resistance in preparation for their attempt to integrate the downtown Nashville lunch counters. He said in the address, that at the time there really was no guarantee that the freedom movement would succeed. In fact, in the spring of 1960 Vanderbilt rewarded Lawson's integration efforts by expelling him from the university (a fact which must have made that meal last January an especially savory one.) Yet in spite of the empirical, Lawson and that non-violent army of college students put their faith in the hope that indeed the world was going to one day change. And it is.

And so, we who know the truth about what the world is becoming are odd. We who put our faith in the resurrection are indeed a little bizarre. And we wouldn't have it any other way; because we do not put our ultimate faith in what the DSM calls "ordinary life experience", but rather in the experience of an extraordinary God.

Reflections on Calling at Cana

2007-10-17T18:32:00.000-07:00

The article I wrote for Relevant Magazine has generated a few comments to which I would like to respond. So please indulge me here as a respond to comments that were posted. To know what I'm addressing go see those comments.

First off, I consider my writing to be a kind of art. Art is inherently hard to explain and trying to explain ones own art seems too often like bad form. However, I do not think art should be created for the sheer sake of aesthetic, but rather for the glory of God. More to the point, I wrote the Relevant article not because I am an artist, but because I am a pastor. That means that whatever I write or say is only a preface to the kind of God talk I want us all to engage in. So I'm glad to respond to comments and welcome them.

Now on to the article itself. At the beginning of each of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) there is record of Jesus being driven out into the wilderness to be tempted. In the Gospel of John there is no such temptation in the wilderness. However, at the heart of Calling at Cana there is an assumption on my part that Jesus' temptation did not end with his time in the wilderness, but rather followed him throughout his life and ministry and culminated on the Cross. The central thrust of Jesus' temptation was the attraction of not fulfilling his mission on the cross. I think we see Jesus wrestling with the lure of that attraction in Cana.

But, the moment we start talking about Jesus and temptation things get sticky. Preachers and film makers (ask Martin Scorsese) get accused of being disrespectful of the Jesus a lot of pious people in the world like to cling to - a Jesus who never struggled, never wrestled with his call, never had to go and pray for courage. That Jesus never existed outside a lot of candy-coated fantasies. Jesus of Nazareth was human and part of the risk of his being human was his openness to struggle. We might call this vulnerability.

I have tried to show that vulnerable struggle with Cana. And I don't think I'm beyond the boundaries of the text. As I said in the article, the story itself opens a space for wondering, and so I wondered: What would it mean for Jesus too to struggle with his call? Put differently, what would it mean if Jesus were being tempted to say no to be the Messiah?

Though she would not like me blaming this on her, I have to confess that I got the idea of reading the Wedding Feast at Cana as a temptation story from my wife. She called my attention to some other scenes in the Gospels, outside the wilderness scene and the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus may very well have been tempted to do and be something other than what he was called to. Off the top of my head I think of the healing of the Syrophenician's daughter, the dialogue with Peter following Peter's profession of faith, and the point at which Jesus fled because the people wanted to make him king.

I think too often we like to compartmentalize Jesus' temptation. There is the temptation in the wilderness where Satan offers Jesus the world and then the temptation in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus wrestles weighs the cost of his crucifixion. Part of this compartmentalization is an honest attempt to glorify Jesus. Yet I feel that there is a great danger in separating these two moments of Jesus' life from all the rest of his life and ministry; for doing so blinds us to the reality of our own temptation - the seductiveness of which is always present, from the first day to the last.

Mm. . .I'm Thirsty

2007-10-11T16:59:00.000-07:00

On Sunday afternoon we celebrated our American Baptist association's annual meeting. My friend and former classmate Chris Rice talked. He shared some profound stories from his life of living along the path of racial reconciliation. Many of those stories can be found in his book Grace Matters.

Following Chris' talk I and some deacons from our church led the whole assembly in Communion. For various reasons we I decided to break the typical Baptist protocol and have people come forward to receive communion (I can hear the collective Baptist gasp). This was the first time I had ever officiated a service of "intinction" (the official name for the practice of dipping the consecrated bread into the cup). I held the cup as the congregation streamed by. Everyone had a nametag on and as they dipped I addressed each of them by name. "The blood of Christ, for you Rebecca." "The blood of Christ, shed for you, Rohn." "Riki, the blood of Christ, given for you." The thing that gripped me most powerfully were the fingers that dipped their bread into that cup.. Some were long and beautiful. Some were stumpy and fat. Most were white, but some were black. And I hate to admit this, given that I was the one who decided on this whole intinction business, but some of the fingers were really, really dirty. Like dirty enough to make a germaphobe never come out of the house again. Yet even in that there was a profound truth about Christ. The cup, was open and available to all in spite of our dirtiness, or perhaps because of it.

After communion we went downstairs into the kitchen and one of my deacons had the presence of mind to ask if the cooks would like to receive communion also. I didn't do a very good job of explaining intinction to the group and before I knew it the first lady had swallowed her bread and was about to take a pull right from the cup. "Mm. . .I'm thirsty," she said. I saw the other ladies' eyes grow big as pumpkins. "Uh, I think I'm going to let you go last," I said embarrassingly. "And now, for the rest of you, dip the bread into the cup."

I've thought a lot about that lady over the last couple of days. I've decided that she in spite of how awkward she made me feel maybe she was on to something. Maybe we should all be as unabashadly thirsty for God as she was.

Calling at Cana

2007-10-04T17:12:00.000-07:00

Relevant Magazine has posted a fun little article I wrote about Jesus, the wedding at Cana, and calling. "Calling at Cana" is the title, appropriately enough. It's short, but good I think. So go give it a look.

And by the way, some dude is at the top of the article looking all hip and ponderous like. Not me. Definitely not me.

Ultimate Allegiances

2007-10-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

Ethicsdaily has a provocative article on comments made by Melissa Snarr, an ethicist at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Snarr says that American Christians have lost their ultimate allegiance to the person and work of Jesus and have instead replaced it with false allegiances.

Her argument crystallizes around the issue of immigration. She says that Christians have lost what earlier Christian generations knew to be true - that we are all pilgrims in a strange land (to borrow the tag line from a certain blog I really enjoy a lot).

I found her comments very interesting coming on the heals of a talk I gave last night at UVM's Intervarsity Fellowship. I spoke about the Christian witness and race and made the point that racism is really about ultimate allegiances. It is about fidelity to blood (or color or hair type or whatever else race is supposed to be) superceding all other fidelities. The biblical word for this is idolatry.

During the question and answer period one person in the group asked why it was that those who grew up in Sunday School (I didn't) never talked about this stuff. I don't know what exactly I said but I should have said it is because the church has been so thoroughly corrupted by Constantianism that the early witness of the church superceding all class, racial, and ethnic identities has been altogether lost.

This saddens me deeply because I believe that the Gospel that Christians have to proclaim is the one power in this world that can bring an end to the war and hostility and mutual-exclusion of the nations. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ the dividing wall of hostility has been put to shame and a new humanity has been born. All adjectives (black, white, American, Iraqi, Mexican, Texan, Vermonter) have been put back into their rightful place - as secondary to our most primal identity which is not an adjective, but a noun - children of God.

Oh really, O'Reilly?

2007-09-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

Radio and TV host Bill O'Reilly is in hot water for saying what some are claiming were racially insensitive remarks.

He was talking about a rather pleasant experience he had during recent visit to a restaurant in Harlem named Sylvia's. Here's a quote from the Washington Post article:

"There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, '[Expletive], I want some more ice tea.' It was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there ordering and having fun and there wasn't any craziness at all."

O'Reilly seemed to be trying to be positive and emphasize the fact that in spite of what a lot of white America might think most of black America is civilized. But how he said that came off sounding a lot like a back-handed compliment. No craziness? In a black restaurant? Oh really, O'Reilly?

What he said was silly. Worse, it hurt people. He deserves to be told that. Straight up.

He does not deserve to be harshly chastened however. If we are going to get serious and start having some frank dialogue about race in this country (which I applaud O'Reilly for attempting to do) then we are going to have to give each other some grace. All we have are these words and we are trying to put very complicated and very pregnant feelings into those words. If we continue to jump on someone the moment they say something that isn't quite right then we will soon discover that most people will not feel like its worth the risk of talking at all.

That's the tragedy of political correctness. It started off as a boundary for what is exceptable in discussion but ended up eliminating discussion altogether. I hear it all the time. Someone will say, "Well, you know these days you gotta be PC." And they quit right there. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The truth is most people don't know how to be PC. They're not PC at home around the dinner table with their kids. They're not PC in bed with their spouses. So when they get out in the public sphere and something heated like race comes up they simply don't know how to talk. And that's the end of discussion.

And the end of reconciliation also.

So, let's tell Bill we don't like what he said. But let's don't tell him to shut up.

Sermon: The Lost and the Found

2007-09-25T16:04:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while. Sometimes I think I'm just going to quit this thing. Then I'll get a random email from someone saying I should write more or an old friend will call out ofthe blue and say they found me here and enjoy reading about my life. That gets me to wondering about calling - like does this thing honor God and edify others enough to keep putting blood, sweat and tears in? If it does then I probably ought to pour more in. So that' were I am today.

Anyway, today I am posting a sermon I preached a couple of Sundays ago. I think it says a lot of important things about church and community and God's longing desire for the lost. I pray that it does indeed honor God and edify someone.

Sometime last month I marked my fourteenth anniversary of being a Christian. It’s never really a big deal. The day just comes and goes with little fanfare. No note from Billy Graham. No card from the Pope. Jesus doesn’t come down and take me out to eat at the Outback Steakhouse.

Nevertheless, sometime around the first of August each year I remember back to when I made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and my life changed forever. It was a great week at Frontier Ranch Camp just outside Buena Vista, Colorado. We were in the Rockies and I don’t know, perhaps it was the Rocky Mountain high, but I fell in love seven times that week. That’s once per day. That’s enough to give even Bill Jocelyn a run for his money. The first six didn’t work out — thankfully. But the seventh did. The last night of camp we had a party and dozens of kids stood up to share about what happened to them at camp. I stood up too. “This week I fell in love with Jesus Christ,” I said. When it was all done I remember what the camp preacher said to us. “Tonight,” he said, “the angels in heaven are rejoicing.”

I remember exactly what it was that got me that week. I’ve told you before. I was circled up with a group of guys from my hometown and Scott Travis our leader had us reading a passage from the book of Matthew. Jesus was having dinner at a tax collector’s house and there were all kinds of people there who didn’t quite have their lives together. The Pharisees, the religious authorities of the day, took exception. They began to grumble. “This man eats with tax collectors and sinners,” they said. Jesus discerned their thoughts. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick,” he told them. “I have come to call not the righteous, but the sinners.” I remember reading that and then looking up with a grin on my face and twinkle in my eye. “Jesus has come to call sinners? That means he’s has come to call me.”

The gospel got me that night and though I have read the story of Jesus over and over it has been getting me again and again over these last fourteen years. The gospel got me in a new and fresh way this week and I want to share that experience with you.

Today’s story sounds a lot like that story in Matthew that I read for the first time in that circle fourteen years ago. Luke says that Jesus had amassed large crowds that among those gathered around Jesus were some tax collectors and so-called sinners. Again the religious leaders began to grumble. “This man not only has attracted sinners and tax collectors, but he lets them stay. He welcomes them.”

This time Jesus did not answer with a story about doctors coming for the sick. Instead he answered them with two parables. The first is a story about a lost sheep. “Which of you,” Jesus said, “if he had a hundred sheep and lost one, would not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go in search of the one that was lost. And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices and returns home. Upon his return, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me,’ for I have found my sheep that was lost.”

Then Jesus tells his followers a second parable. It is a parable of a woman with ten silver drachma coins, who loses one. Jesus says, “Will this woman not light a lamp and sweep the house and search diligently until she finds that lost coin?” And when she finds it, Jesus says, she runs and calls all the neighbors. “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I have lost.”

I read these stories and think, “My goodness, these people Jesus dreams up really need help.” First the woman. I see her lighting the lamp and sweeping the floor and digging inside the trash. She’s really quite eccentric. Finally she puts her hand down one of the corners of the couch. “Is that my lost drachma? No that’s a stale Post-Toastie flake.” Then, when she finally finds the coin she loses her sense. She runs and tells all the neighbors in her apartment. Knock-knock-knock. “Hey. . .I just want you to know that I lost my drachma, but now. . .I found it.” Finally she throws a party and gives everyone a t-shirt. “Shirley found her drachma, and all I got was this stupid t-shirt.”

And the shepherd. The one who leaves the ninety-nine others in the wilderness, where they are not quite safe and sound, and goes out to look for the one that is lost. He leaves ninety-nine to go and find one? Is he just really remedial in math or is he absolutely crazy?

Crazy I think is the answer. They’re both crazy. And that is Jesus’ point. If a woman can be this crazy about one lost coin, and a shepherd this crazy about one lost sheep, then how much more crazy is God about one lost child? And so, Jesus says, the angels rejoice more over one sinner who repents, then over ninety-nine who need no repentance.

Jesus is saying something really profound about the economy of God’s kingdom. There is an incredible extravagance about Jesus, the good shepherd, who leaves the found in order to go and find the lost. That means we as a church should do some pretty extravagant things for those among us who are on the margins. Yet here is where the gospel got me this week. I have always read that to mean that there are times when one is more important than the rest. But it is not so much that the one lost sheep is greater than the other ninety-nine, but that rather ninety-nine is less than the one hundred. What Jesus is trying to communicate about the kingdom of God is that it as a place where everyone is valued, not because they are special or good or deserving, but because they belong.

Belonging to each other is not always easy. On Tuesday I was talking with a friend in our church and he described the people here as a bunch of individual puzzle pieces. I imagined large jigsaw puzzle spread across a table in someone’s living room. There were all kinds of pieces of assorted sizes and shapes, yet they came together seamlessly. Where one zigged the other zagged, where one curved in another curved out. In my mind I could see one breathtakingly beautiful picture of Jesus Christ. He was carrying a lamb upon his shoulders and an angelic chorus was welcoming them both home. It was perfect. But before I could fully take it all in my friend added an odd twist. “Except,” he said, “all of the pieces are from separate puzzles.” The picture suddenly became a lot less breathtaking. It was . Very postmodern, but not exactly perfect. And then it hit me, that was just the point. This church, the United Church of Colchester, is really just a big box of spare puzzle pieces. The lost and found of puzzle pieces. Put us together and we’re not very beautiful. Certainly not perfect. We’re really not sure how we ended up here really. But we are here, and that’s the important thing. We’re all here — together.

We come from different backgrounds and different viewpoints. Today in these pews next to you there are conservatives and there are liberals. Some voted for Bernie and some voted for Rich. And some didn’t vote at all. Some of us here were born and raised Baptist. Some are died in the wool Congregationalists. I think of Joyce Sweeney who had me and Irie over to dinner the first week we were in town. “Now, Joyce,” I said, “You were a Congregationalist is that right?” “I still am a Congregationalist,” she said. OKAY. There are also Episcopalians here. And Catholics. And some who wouldn’t consider themselves anything, but who are just interested in this man Jesus, who welcomed sinners.

You know what this all means don’t you? If that image is at all true it means we’re headed for T-R-O-U-B-L-E. We aren’t all going to get along always. Even your pastor is going to have a hard time coming together with some of these pieces he has wound up in the same box with.

Pastor Robert McCracken told of the young minister who could not make peace with one woman in the church. The two argued about everything from the meaning of justification by faith alone to the color of the altar cloth. Finally, when she just quit returning his phone calls, he decided to pay her a visit at home. He knocked three times and could hear her making all sorts of noise inside, but the door remained shut. Finally the young minister decided to peek through the keyhole and there was another eyeball staring right back. “Well, Mrs. Smith,” the minister said, “I see we have finally come eye to eye on something.”

We aren't always going to see eye to eye. Earlier this month I was in a meeting here at church. Because Irie had class I had Gabby and unfortunately I was unable to coordinate a sitter for the night so Gabby had to tag along. As everyone piled in I told each of them, “Tonight, we are kid friendly.” We were real friendly until about halfway through the meeting I said something that someone disagreed with. A semi-tense cloud fell over the rest of the meeting. Things suddenly felt about fifteen degrees cooler in the room. It seemed like the perfect prescription for global warming.

After the meeting adjurned I followed the person who had disagreed with me out to the door. We both argued our points for awhile when suddenly we heard a loud scream from within my study. It was Gabs. “Well,” I said, “I gotta go.” I took a half dozen steps toward the study, paused at the door, and turned back around. Tears flushed to my eyes. “I want you to know that I love you,” I said. “I really do love you.”

We embraced and then I made my way back toward the screams. I walked into the study and there Gabs was standing up on the conference table, completely bottomless. A host of church people were huddled over her working on changing her diaper. Tears were flowing in her eyes too. And then the person with whom I had disagreed came in also.

So there we were. The old and the young. The saints and sinners. The Pharisees and the tax collectors. The lost and the found. We were all there. Ninety-nine plus one. We were all there. And we all belonged there together.

And the angels were rejoicing.

Diversity

2007-08-16T07:04:00.000-07:00

This is a really provocative article passed along to me today by a parishioner. The article is an op-ed from the Wall Street Journal which basically calls into question the value diversity gives to our society.

The article raises a lot of interesting questions about what diversity means and why we should value it as a society. I am afraid that some readers will see this as suggesting that the call for a more diverse society is what is fragmenting our society. That is certainly not the case. Rather it is the mandate for greater public diversity absent of substantive connection in our private lives that sometimes leads to disjuncture and frustration. To say that we have diversity in our schools and our work places without having any diversity at our dinner tables calls into question what it is that is valuable about diversity in the first place.

St. Paul said that we can have faith so as to move mountains but if we have not love we are nothing. So it is with diversity. We can have a lot blacks and whites in the same classroom but if they aren't loving one another then we have not yet reached our goal. My heart weeps for a world full of so much richness that cannot take the final and hard step toward love.

But, as Dr. King said, "I've been to the mountaintop." I've seen the promised land. I've read books like Chris Rice's Grace Matters. I was at our wedding when two families as different as night and day came together and celebrated what God had brought together. There were white people there and black people there and men in traditional African dress and others in Western boots.

And a mariachi band played the theme music...

The Contemplative Gift

2007-08-02T09:42:00.000-07:00

Contemplative experience is not arrived at by the accumulation of grandiose thoughts and visions or by the practice of heroic mortifications. It is not "something you buy" with any coin, however spiritual it might seem to be. It is a pure Gift of God, and it has to be a gift, for that is part of its very essence.

I have been thinking all morning about these words from Merton and how they speak to me right now.

There is nothing like fatherhood to ruin one's spiritual life. Really, I mean it. There is no time to pray or think or write. There is no time for contemplation. I have to be at the pediatrician's office instead.

For four months now I have been wrestling with this and I have found myself becoming increasingly bitter about it all. I carve out a little time when I am going to be intentional and, what do you know, the kiddo just won't stop crying and Irie is having a breakdown and if I don't help then I'm a dead man.

But Merton's words gave me pause this morning. Maybe I'm too consumed with making contemplation. Maybe becoming a true contemplative means learning to let God make it happen instead.

Learning to view life with God as a gift, rather than something that can be manufactured, means learning to see it as we see the dress of the birds of the air. The cardinal neither toils nor spins for his crimson. It was his from the beginning and will be his in the end. So too is our portion of God - ours in the beginning, ours in the end, and ours right now. If we would only receive it.

Somewhere in his journals Merton uses the imagery of the cup as a metaphor for life with God. We are drunkards and we swing wildly at the cup in impetuous desperation. The wine spills everywhere. The object of our desire lost to the avarice of the human heart. If we would only be still and open our mouths and close our eyes and the drink of life would be ours.

An Exercise in Prayer

2007-07-31T05:39:00.000-07:00

Not long ago I went down to visit Harlene Monta at the Ethan Allen Assisted Living home. I showed up unannounced and Harlene was just washing up for dinner. I told her to take her time and that I would be back in a few minutes. I left Harlene’s room and decided to spend the time moseying around the place, saying hi to the residents there.

I walked into the central living room and visited with a couple of women sitting on the couches. Neither of them seemed to pay much attention to my arrival. “Nice weather out there,” I said. “Yep,” one replied automatically. “Nice weather.” I waited for more commentary but none was forthcoming. “Nice bird,” I said pointing to the cage up above their heads. “Parakeet,” the same woman corrected as if I should have known better. “Parakeet, beautiful parakeet,” I said. “Yep, beautiful parakeet,” she said.

It was obvious that I had worn out the welcome that I never had so I excused myself and made my way back toward Holly’s room. Her door was still closed so I wondered down Holly’s hallway reading the signs on hers and her neighbors’ doors. On each door was a picture of the resident along with a cute little saying. Holly Monta — “Plant seeds of friendship.” Lenny Polow – “Imagination is intelligence having fun.” John Baker – “Gone fishing.”

As I made my way down the hallway reading doors I came to another communal area where a woman was sitting by herself. I had a seat in the chair next to the one she was seated in and introduced myself. “Hi, I’m Ryon.” She smiled largely and said her name was Elizabeth and that she had been a resident at Ethan Allen for six years. “Six years. . .well I guess you about got it down,” I said. She giggled. “Yeah, just about.” I asked Elizabeth if she knew Holly. “Holly,” she said, “yeah, she’s cool.” Now I have to tell you that when I showed up that afternoon about the last thing in the world that I thought I would be hearing was one of these residents call another of the residents “cool.”

“Holly Monta,” I thought to myself. ‘“Planting seeds of friendship’ — that is pretty cool.

When Holly came out of her room she told me that she had just taken another fall — the most recent in a series of falls she has been having for some time now. I looked down and saw that her arm was black and blue. I laid my hand on her arm and paused. I looked from her arm back up into her face. “I’m going to have to pray to God to send you a guardian angel,” I said. “That, or a padded room.” She looked back at me and grinned. “Both,” she said, “pray for both.”

Both, pray for both. Pray for it all; I think that is what Jesus is telling the disciples in today’s text from Luke.

They have come to him and want him to teach them to pray just as John taught his disciples to pray. First Jesus responds by telling the disciples to pray in the words that we say here every week and have come to know as the Lord’s Prayer. “When you pray,” Jesus tells them, “Pray like this:

Our Father, hallowed be thy name,
Your kingdom come
Give us each day our daily bread
And forgive us our sins,
As we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us
And do not bring us to the time of trial.

Then Jesus launches into a story. It is a story about a knock at midnight. “Suppose,” Jesus says, “that someone comes to you at midnight and is weary and in need of food. You have none, so you go next door to ask of your neighbor. ‘Friend,’ you say, ‘an unexpected guest has just arrived and I have nothing to set before him.’ He answers from within, ‘Go away, do not bother me. I was asleep and my children are all tucked in with me. It is a very inconvenient time.’ Truly I tell you,” Jesus says, “even if your neighbor will not get up out of bed for friendship’s sake, surely he will get up because you will not stop pounding on that door.”

“Ask,” Jesus says, “and it will be given you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be open. For I tell you whoever asks receives, whoever seeks finds. Whoever knocks, she shall find.”

The disciples have come asking how to pray. Perhaps they are a little nervous about religion. Perhaps talking to God scares them a little. So they ask Jesus to teach them the right words. But Jesus isn’t concerned about the right words. They don’t have to have the right words. He wants them to see that they can pray simply and honestly, like a child talking to his daddy.

We say the Lord’s Prayer every week and we have ritualized it enough that it often sounds formal and stilted. But in reality it is a prayer that a child would pray. In fact, if you think about it, it is modeled on the kind of request that a child might bring to his father wants something. “Father,” “Daddy,” “Hallowed be thy name.” “You know I think you are such a cool, dad. The coolest in the neighborhood.” Then the kicker that needs no modern translation: “Give.”

And here is the thing about daddies — we secretly want to be givers. Our kids know this. At a very early age our kids learn that we dads are the biggest suckers around. Gabrielle has discovered this over the course of these last four months of life with me. I mean, you would not believe the things that a grown man will do to get a smile from his child. It’s pathetic. Downright shameful.

And it doesn’t stop when their infants. We keep on. We keep on because we want desperately for our children to know that we love them. I think of Christmas 2004. Irie and I had been dating for nearly a year and I had just begun what I now consider to be my militant vegetarian phase. I was passionate about not killing animals for the sake of mere style or comfort. I was even shopping for pleather shoes online. But my daddy in Texas didn’t quite get it. Under the tree was the biggest present you ever saw with the tag, “To Ryon, Love, Dad” on it. Imagine my surprise when I opened it. A full-quill ostrich brief case. “Now listen Ryon,” he said, “I want you to know, that it took a whole ostrich to make that brief case.” He must have told me that three or four times. “A whole ostrich.” “A mean a big ’en too.”

I still have that briefcase. I don’t use it much. But I have to admit I love it. I love it, not because a whole ostrich went into it, but because my dad’s whole heart went into also. And for that I’d have to say it was one of the best gifts I’ve ever been given.

“Which one of you if your child asks for a fish will give him a snake?” Jesus says. “And who of you if your child asks for an egg will give a scorpion? If you then who are evil know how to make good gifts, then how much more will your father who is in heaven give you the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.”

And there is the surprise. The disciples wanted to know how to pray, but in the end it is really not us who pray at all. It is God who prays through us with the Holy Spirit. We have only to be open to that and God will give it, because it is in God’s nature to give good gifts and it is in our nature to receive them.

I titled today’s sermon “An Exercise in Prayer.” Like with most other forms of exercise, things happen when we find the discipline to show up. That’s why Paul said pray at all times. Show up and pray and offer the world to the movement of the Holy Spirit and let God do the rest.

We let the Holy Spirit have the residents at the Ethan Allen home, especially those two funny ladies on the couch. We pray for them. We pray for their parakeet also. We ask that his song will bring a small note of the kingdom to somebody today. On earth as it is in heaven. We pray for Lenny Polow also, thanking him for helping us to see what fun God’s intelligence was having when God imagined us into being. We pray for John Baker, who has gone fishing. We pray that he might continue to be a fisher not only of fish, but of men. We pray for Elizabeth and ask that God would let her know that in our eyes she’s pretty cool too. And finally, we pray for Holly Monta. We pray that she continues to plant seeds of friendship wherever she goes. And we pray also for that guardian angel or padded room or both.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and through the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Dr. Jim: Intelligence Having Fun

2007-07-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

"Imagination is intelligence having fun."

That was one of the quotes hanging on one of the resident's doors when I visited the Ethan Allen assisted living home the other day (I preached a sermon on that today that maybe I'll share here tomorrow.). It was Lenny Polow's door and next to the quote was a picture of Lenny. And he certainly did look to be having a lot of fun in that picture.

I want to introduce to you someone else out there who seems to be having a lot of fun with his intelligence. His name is Dr. Jim Somerville. Jim is pastor of the First Baptist Church of Washington, DC and he has just begun posting audio links to all of his sermons at the FBCDC mychurch website.

In the summer of 2004 I showed up in DC set to begin law school that August. By then end of July I had come to the conclusion that I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life and that I needed a giant course correction in life if I was going to save my soul.

Now I have to confess. I really have no idea whether or not the sermons I heard Jim Somerville preach that summer were what saved me. But let's say that right now you are about to make the biggest mistake of your life (some of you are). And let's go even one step further. Let's say that this summer you are where I was three summers ago and that you may very well be in jeopardy of losing your soul (some of you are). Don't you think it just makes sense to play it safe and go hear Dr. Jim?

Horse Race

2007-07-25T17:22:00.000-07:00

I am following the Farm Bill like a Derby horserace (where are the julips?). It's neck and neck but I really do think there is enough momentum being pushed for reform.

Here is where the breaking action can be followed: Mulch

This morning Diane Rehm dedicated an hour to the Farm Bill. They had a guy on from the South Plains Cotton Growers Association, which is headquartered in Lubbock. It was nice to finally hear from somebody who doesn't speak with a funny accent.

Too bad he what he said was so misguided. Basically he kept on saying the the Farm Bill is too complex to understand and that those calling for major reform just don't appreciate the nuances. In other words: this is our business, stay out!

People all around the nation are waking to the fact that the Farm Bill affects more than farmers. It affects everyone and it ought to reflect the things that we care about and, above all, it ought to be just.

The Farm Bill is complicated. Very. But here is the bottom line. The way we are subsidizing cotton and a lot of other crops right now is driving small farms to extinction and creating desperate farming conditions abroad.

Complicated or not, as it stands the way we subsidize farming is not working. For that alone we ought to try a new way of doing things.

Farm Bill Fairness Amendment

2007-07-24T13:51:00.000-07:00

Oxfam America and Bread for the World are urging us to immediately contact our congressional representatives and ask them to vote in favor of the Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment.

Go here for details on this amendment.

Rep. Welch's support for this legislation is critical.

Contact him today:

Vermont Office
30 Main Street
Third Floor, Suite 350
Burlington, VT 05401
Phone: (888) 605-7270 (toll free in Vermont)
(802) 652-2450

Saying Goodbye

2007-07-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday a friend of our church was killed in a tragic diving accident. Kurtis McKinstry was only 23 years old and we were all terribly shocked to learn of his death.

Words fail at a tragic time like this. Yet I remember hearing Charlie Johnson speaking about the first time he had to preach a funeral while in seminary. He was overcome with the weight of the assignment and went and visited one of his professors. He said he cried like a baby. Then that seminary professor got out of his chair walked around his desk and literally shook Charlie. "Listen to me, young man. You are going to go out there and tell that family that Jesus Christ rose from the grave because that is our Gospel and that is what we are called to proclaim."

Into the darkness of death the preacher is called to speak the light of life. Here is what I shared at Kurtis' memorial. May it bring comfort to us all. And may Kurtis rest in peace.

I begin with a story from when Brad and Kurt were very young boys, just five or six years old. The two brothers were playing outside in the yard when the next thing Ruth, the boys’ mother, knew Kurt burst inside the house. He was breathless. “Brad gone cross the hay,” he said. That was six-year-old speak for Brad had gone beyond the natural boundaries of the property and ventured into territory they both knew they were not supposed to go. “Yeah,” Brad said on Saturday, “he was always the one tattling on me.”

Kurtis P. McKinstry.

“A brother.”

Here are some other words and phrases that I have heard used to describe Kurt over this weekend: “A free spirit.” “A good dancer.” “A partier.” “An artist.” “Humble, but cocky” (that one’s from Brad). “A real ladies’ man” (that one’s from his grandma). “A person who loved life.”

Only 23 years old it was a life that was just too short. His was truly a tragic death, and as the preacher charged with coming to you with a message this morning I wish I could tell you I knew the reason why. But I have to confess I don’t. I can only say that I can be here to help us all to mourn well. I pray that that is enough.

When a young person like Kurtis dies we mourn two things. First, we mourn the loss of who he was. We mourn his strength and vitality and zest for life. We mourn his smile and the smiles he gave us. We mourn his presence. We know that the absence of that presence will leave a terrible void in our lives.

But there is something else we mourn also. We mourn not only who Kurtis was, but also who he was becoming. We mourn the fact that he never had a chance to fully know and appreciate the unique gift that he was to the world. Kurtis was still in many ways an adolescent. He was just beginning to become the person he was created to be. Kurt had hopes and dreams and we had hopes and dreams for him. So in that respect we are mourning not only the past we lost, but also the future we never had.

Mourning well is a really important thing. In this culture we are taught to bottle things up and not show any emotion. Men have to be men. No crying allowed.

But let’s don’t forget that Jesus himself cried. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus in the story that was read earlier by Kurt’s grandpa. What does that tell us? Death saddened Jesus just like it saddens us, and he gave himself permission to feel that sadness. We should give ourselves permission to feel that sadness also. We should give ourselves permission to feel the things that we are feeling. Anger, frustration, grief, regret, guilt, bitterness. We should be honest with each other about the things we are feeling. And the person we should be most honest with is God. God can handle our honesty. God can handle our grief and our pain and our questioning. God is big enough to handle all those things.

Mourning well also means remembering. On Thursday night when we found out about Kurt many of us gathered up at the hospital. As we sat in the room Ruth said something that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. She said that the day she found out she was pregnant with Kurt she drove back from the doctor’s office singing, “I’m the happiest girl in the whole USA.” Pain and loss are a part of the risk of loving. Yet the grace of remembering well is learning to realize that in spite of our loss and our pain we would do it all over again. Ruth and Kevin would have Kurt again. And in spite of the pain today, we too would allow him to come into our lives once more.

Another thing I heard Kurt described as this week was a Good Samaritan. As I gathered with the family and a couple of his friends on Saturday it was decided that it would be appropriate to pay tribute to Kurt by reading that story that Jesus gives us in the Gospel of Luke. Kurt, it was said, was just the kind of guy who would stop and help someone if they needed a hand. He would do anything for anybody. I imagine he got that from his daddy. Whether it was helping out on the farm or at his uncle Jerry’s or uncle Tim’s houses, Kurt was indeed the kind of guy who would take time out to give a hand. I think this sunk in most for me last night when I stopped and read what someone had written on one of the poster boards put out in memory of Kurtis. “Thank you for helping me learn how to ride my bike,” signed Jen. A Good Samaritan, yes, and a hero also in some little girl’s eyes also.

How will you remember Kurt? Some of us will remember him as the guy who always gave hugs. Some of us will remember him as a great football player. Some of us will remember him as the friend who stuck closer than a brother. A few of us will remember him as the son and brother who camped out under the stars and wondered if there was life out there. We will all remember him for proudly living up to the slogan on his own t-shirt: “Mr. Lizard never looked both ways.” He lived and died that way, going for it at full throttle.

I for one am going to remember Kurt just the way I saw him on Wednesday, July 4th. After the parade in Colchester Village a dozen or so of us gathered on the front lawn of the church and played a game of waffle ball. Now we all know that Kurt was tall and strapping and quite the athlete. But he had no qualms playing in the front yard of the church with a few old geezers, a Baptist preacher and a bunch of eight year old church girls.

Kurt was a kid at heart.

Yet he was more than that. He was becoming more than that anyway. There was something deeper stirring inside of him. Some of us saw glimpses of that. After he left the church on the Fourth he took a ride with Kevin and Jill and began asking questions about church. Under that I really do believe he was asking questions about the meaning of life. Just what was happening inside that head and heart of his? I wondered that as I preached on Easter Sunday and saw something coming visibly to life on his face as he heard and wrestled with the Easter message? Just who was Kurt becoming? His grandmother Barb wondered that when just last Wednesday Kurt left a message on her machine and told her that he loved her for the very first time.

I sure wish I knew what was going on inside of Kurt. What was God up to? We’ll never really be sure, but I have a vague notion that something profound was taking place just below the surface.

When a young person like Kurtis dies we pause to look and see what is going on below the surface in us. In the face of life’s fragility it behooves each of us to look beyond the surface of our own flesh see what God is doing down deep inside. It is a time for asking questions — ultimate questions, like who am I? Why was I created? What good will I do in this world? What difference will I make? How will I be remembered?

Last night when we got home from Kurt’s wake I went downstairs and began writing this message. After a while Irie came down. She could tell that I under some stress but nevertheless she sat down right in my lap. She said she was sad because of Kurt’s loss. She said she needed me to hold her. “Love on me,” she said. “Love on me like you have all the time in the world.” I got to thinking about that. We need to love on each other like we have all the time in the world, because the fact of the matter is we don’t. We don’t have all the time in the world. We just have a short time. We just have right now.

Our right now with Kurt has ended. He has gone on to another place — a place that Jesus tells us we should not fear. “Let not your hearts be troubled,” he said. “Believe in God. Believe also in me. In my father’s house there are many rooms. If it were not so would I have told you that I go there to prepare a place for you? I am going there to prepare a place for you. I will come back and take you to be with me so that where I am you may be also.”

In the Lazarus story, after Lazarus has been dead for four days, Jesus finally arrives in Bethany. Everyone is weeping and wailing and mourning the loss of their friend. Mary and Martha are mourning the loss of their brother. Upon seeing Jesus Martha says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

I imagine Jesus looking at her as tears streak down her face. He wants her to know something — something about Lazarus and himself and the resurrecting power of God. “Martha,” he says, “your brother will rise again.”

Brad, brother will rise again. Kevin, Ruth your son will rise again.

Kurt gone cross the hay.

But we ain’t seen the last of him.

Amen.

The Heat is On

2007-07-18T06:28:00.001-07:00

A chorus of voices is beginning to call for substantive reform to this year's farm bill.

In just the past forty-eight hours I have heard or seen it on:

Ethicsdaily.com

Sojourners Magazine

and On Point with Tom Ashbrook

Mourning Marlette

2007-07-12T13:04:00.000-07:00

"Welcome to Kudzu"

Those were the first words of welcome I heard when I showed up for my first church job. I was in my third year of divinity school and had been assigned to an academic year of youth ministry at a small church in North Carolina. It was an assignment I was not particularly interested in and had I known what was meant by "Welcome to Kudzu" it might well have been enough to send me packing the first day.

The pastor was of course referring to the comic strip "Kudzu" by Doug Marlette which both honored and made light of the mid-twentieth century South and its way of life. Marlette was raised a Southern Baptist and the preacher in his comicstrip, Will B. Dunn, was modeled after famed Baptist minister, Will Campbell. A central theme in his work was the South's struggle to overcome what Jimmy Carter called "dead weight" of its racist past.

Marlette died Tuesday evening in a tragic car accident. Michael Westmoreland-White has written a nice piece about Marlette's life and work. Marlette was one of the best satirists of his era and earned a Pulitzer Prize for his work in 1988.

In many ways Marlette's death embodies the death of a whole generation of Southern Baptists who were first-hand witnesses to (and participants in) the civil rights movement dramatically altered the Southern way of life for good.

Marlette's work was an artifact of a time that still very much shapes the Southern identity today. Marlette helped us to remember the sins and sanctimony of our forebears in a way that neither canonized nor demonized, but simply told the truth.

That memory will be missed.

2007-07-10T12:10:00.000-07:00

Burying the N-Word

On Monday the NAACP buried the enemy.

The N-Word is no more.

I commend Julian Bond and the rest of NAACP for having the courage to say that the N-Word is simply not going to be tolerated - out of the mouth of anybody.

This seems like a no-brainer. But for a long time an argument has been made (by some prominent African Americans, including luminaries like Dick Gregory) that by taking the hate-filled word and appropriating it into new contexts something subversively redemptive can take place. This happened, in an admittedly much simpler and less painful case, at my parents' high school alma mater where the Plainsmen of Monterey High School came to proudly embrace the once-belittling moniker "Peons".

Those who argue that using the N-Word in new contexts are basically saying there is no power in the the word save the power that it has been given. The charge that it has is not in its phonetic syllables in and of themselves, but rather in its context of use. This is the tricky thing about language. It is pregnant with meaning. Historically the N-Word has represented more than just a word; instead it has been a verbal symbol of a whole history of hatred, oppression and violence.

I am sympathetic to this line of reasoning. There is a certain logic to it. It is the same logic that many were using in the Apostle Paul's day to justify eating meat sacrificed to other gods. Here was the syllogism: "If there are no other gods, then in reality this meat has not been sacrificed at all. So let us eat" Well, yes. Logically true. But the way we communicate meaning as humans is, though not illogical, not altogether syllogistic either. Paul was not concerned about logical argument. He was concerned about people's faith and creating a kind of community that would sustain that faith. If someone with "weaker" faith is bothered by meat that is said to have been sacrificed to other gods, then we best not eat. Even if other gods have no ontological being, they certainly have a conceptual being. And that is enough to make a brother fall.

Part of the justification for keeping the N-Word alive is an appeal to "rights". This word has been used against us for so long, now we have a "right" to take the word and use it on our own terms. Fair enough. But I am stuck on Paul's point: what is most paramount in determing what to do is not "rights" but rather community.

I think it is best for our community that the N-word was buried.

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

2007-07-10T07:37:00.000-07:00

A Recent Self-Revelation

I have a responsibility to talk about race. I have a responsibility to tell my story and my family's story. I have a responsibility to speak because I have been graced (burdened?) with (figurative and literal) pulpit.

How did I come to this pulpit? Oh, if I only knew how such things happen in this world. When I was a child grown-ups told me that marrying a black lady was a lot like driving a Ford - "there may not be anything wrong with it, but you'll always feel a little funny about it." When I was a child I thought like a child. I spoke like a child. When I was a child I learned to speak like a grown-up.

But when I became an adult I put away the grown-up ways. I became a child again. When I became an adult I married a black lady.

And here is the irony. I do sometimes feel a little funny about it some times. I feel a little funny like W.E.B. DuBois felt a little funny when he looked through the looking glass of double-consciousness and read the world's mind: "How does it feel to be a problem?"