Baptist & Blogger Part II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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.