Clash of Calendars

This past weekend was Pentecost and Memorial Day--a phenomenon that inspired this post and a great conversation with my new field ed supervisor, Julie. "In the church, what do you do with secular holidays?" she asked.


Essentially, the question is about secular/Christian perspectives on time (Do holidays mark and measure the creeping monotony of human time or should they break into it--shading our chronology with hues of eschatology and reminding us that God defines time?). Likewise, there are two calendars in tension; the Christian calendar (lectionary, Advent, Easter, Pentecost, etc...) and the secular one that every American hangs on their wall. ....but which one should shape our worship?

1. Only the Christian calendar! That's the only true Christian way of life!

• (Julie asked people to wear red/yellow/orange on Petecost in order to avoid the red/white/blue of memorial day)
• Immediately, this may seem right, but it's not so easy. Some secular holidays are conceived as Christian. (What's more Christian than giving thanks on Thanksgiving? And isn't it a commandment to honor our mother's and fathers? So Mother's day is biblical.) Plus, as Julie pointed out, it's important to recognize (and preach to) a congregation's context. If your congregation is thinking in terms of memorial day, then why not give people a way to think about God IN the reality of that life? Besides, in completely ignoring secular holidays, worship runs the risk of being disjointed from life...And even holidays that are Christian have been tainted by the secular world. Advent has become the season of shopping

2. Embrace the secular holidays! Preach to the People.  Christmas and Easter were pagan holidays that Christians used to infuse the narrative of Christ. Celebrations of spring and new life became reminders of Jesus' resurrection.

•  But so many holidays are problematic
• Is 'Thanksgiving' the same as giving thanks? (No, because it's a political holiday and it oppressed the natives...
• Mother's Day run danger of painfully excluding so many....'mothering' isn't limited women and being a woman cannot be reduced to mothering 
• In addition risking false celebration (ie, honoring soldier sacrifices insread of Jesus' sacrifice), secular holidays are often times of false joy ("Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year" so the implication is that if you're not happy, something is wrong with you. Holidays often bring financial/emotional burdens and highlight brokenness rather than invite us into life...
• Plus, "to celebrate a holiday in the worship service is to baptize it. Transformation is needed, but the secular context doesn't always get transformed in worship." -JP
• You could preach them from the fliip side. Preach right at them, "here's what this holiday actually is...here's what we miss...here's the Christian lens and how we SHOULD celebrate them"
• Preaching is a conversion--moving us away from memorial day and death into Pentecost and life!
• If you try this, make sure to alert the person doing the children's message. There's nothing like following a children's message by saying how it was wrong...
• But...Are they really worth 1/52 Sundays? Every year? (when the lectionary is a 3-year cycle). Are these holidays THAT important?

 3. Incorporate one into the other. 

• You can preach lectionary, but nod towards the holiday in a pastoral prayer...

"Storytelling is a battle. For Christians are living waist-deep in competing narratives--stories of empire, nation, progress, and self-actualization, each of which whispers in our ear, 'This is who you really are. You belong to us.'" Lischer

"Let me Be Laid Aside For Thee"

I'll be honest: the loss of guaranteed appointments scares me.

I mean, ministry is scary enough, right? You put yourself out there. You jump through ordination hoops. You open your future to an itinerant system--not knowing WHERE you'll end up--but knowing, at least, that you'll have SOME kind of job. And that, no matter how tiny or creepy the parsonage, your family will have a place to live. 

More than that, I liked knowing that I would always have a place to do ministry.

I can handle moving around. I've reconciled with that idea. But the possibility of NOT having a church? Or doing sixteen years of church ministry and then getting 'assigned' to unpaid church leave just because the conference needs to cut back on the budget? THAT thought is terrifying.

And I HATE the thought of doing local church ministry with one hand behind my back--one hand feverishly waving to the bishop and cabinet to make sure I get noticed.

Will I have to learn Spanish for the sake of job retention? (instead of learning Spanish for the sake of sharing the Gospel?)  If something goes wrong in the conference, will I have to play it safe instead of speaking out? 
Will this make us more competitive against one another? Will this become an excuse for ditching us before retirement? What if they simply don't like me?

...Some of these fears, I'll admit, are unwarranted and my rational heart knows good and well that this tiny detail is not going to derail the whole seeking-faith UMC system. Other jobs don't come with a guarantee, so why should this one?

However, the notion of 'popular ministry' where golden, vivacious, pastors rise to the top and the quiet faithful ones falls through the cracks and lose their appointments... THAT is a real and scary possibility (The United Methodist Church will have to work hard to avoid that) but if I'm walking out on faith, a little fear is probably a good thing, right?

It certainly makes the covenant prayer a more frighteningly beautiful reality.

A letter for Prison Ministry...Following a conversation about being "soft"

To John and Chad and Tim and Bobby:

It’s been a while since we met at Yokefellows (I apologize for not writing earlier) but I want you to know that I havn’t forgotten. I can’t claim to know  you after such a brief time, but the met that I met seemed remarkable real and I pray for you often—thanking God for your faith, your strength, and your courage.

I want you to know that our conversation made me think, especially during Christmas. (Imagine that! A Divinity student thinking!) Christmas: it’s all about the manger and the birth of Jesus, right? Rather than a fighting saviour, we have Emmanuel—God who comes to us (with us) in an amazing act of grace. He’s a baby for Christ’s sake (literally).

Doesn’t this seem kind of weak? …soft even?

And it doesn’t end with Christmas. It’s all through the Bible:

“Blessed are the meek.” Matt 5:5
“When I am weak, I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:10
“Turn the other cheek.” Luke 6:29
“Forgive others.” Colossians 3:12-14

How does it fit? You can’t get much stronger than the all-powerful creator of the universe, but a man can be the biggest beefcake in the gym and still lack heart and guts, right? Behind all the power and the miracles, was Jesus just a wuss?

“Maybe Christianity is soft.” I started to think.

But I wasn’t satisfied with that. Growing up around carpenters, Jesus must have been physically strong. Heck, Jesus flipped tables in the temple and the soldiers in Gethsemene trembled just at the sight of him--falling to the ground (John 18:6). And he stood his ground when he was persecuted. He faced the cross like a man. Nothing weak about that.

And I keep thinking about the whole power thing and the miracle thing. God certainly had (has) the power. Why the manger? Why mercy? Why grace?

The more I think about it, the more I realize that it takes more strength to have power and choose not to use it (like self control takes more strength than acting out of anger) –the manger was a matter of choice. Rather than raging in anger towards us, God chooses to forgive. Rather than wiping us out, God chooses to wipe away our sins—and gives us the strength to move beyond them.

There’s nothing soft about that.

There is nothing weak about our God!

(and if it weren’t for our time together, I never would have thought about all of that. So thank you.)
Know that you are prayed for and that you all have touched this future-pastor’s heart.

With Christ’s Love,                                         

The Voice

Somewhere I thought someone told me that Calvin (or Luther?) had a problem with women preachers because their voices weren't loud enough....

...I found another blog (railing against female pastors, btw) which offered an audio version in either a male or female voice. I wonder why? Were males only supposed to listen to one while females listened to the other?

(from RevGalBlogPals) I have been getting slammed by my male coworker who tells me to do things that are not possible for a female voice to do - such as - more of a vocal range in pitch (hello - I'm female. I can't do low and gravelly and if I go too high, I sound shrill.)

(a comment on the same blog) Women create emphasis in different ways. I had a terrific speech professor in college who taught me that women can create emphasis by being softer instead of louder or intentionally speaking slower instead of faster. When you speak more softly, you can build back to "normal" and it is heard as if you were getting louder. The same professor talked about body movements and how we "hear" postures differently from men and women.

Palm Reading

We just finished a sermon series called “The Treasures of a Transformed Life” so after six weeks of talking about money, I decided to go for a more upbeat sermon....and chose to preach from the book of Revelation. 

In all seriousness, though, I think the book of Revelation gets a bum deal. It rarely gets preached and most of us avoid it because it seems too intense. Too scary. We hear the word ‘Apocalypse’ and think of violent Martin Sheen movies or bad sci fi…

…but an apocalypse (a revelation) is a vision –not a nightmare. Especially in the Jewish tradition, apocalyptic literature is about hope and assurance that in a battle between good and evil, God wins. Our book of Revelation is no different. It was written during a time of great Christian persecution. The Roman emperor Nero was brutally torturing and slaughtering thousands of Christians.  I don’t even want to think about how hard it would be to wake up and find that your whole church was killed, but I can imagine the questions that arose because we struggle with the same ones today:

Questions like, is God still God when people die? Is God still good when people suffer? Why do bad things happen to good people?

The book of Revelation speaks to these questions. It’s not a magic answer that explains everything
(How on earth do we expect to make sense of God when we can’t make sense of the world around us?)
…but I do think it helps.

Sure, God didn’t step in and stop the Emperor Nero. But God wasn’t silent either. During the persecution, into all of the suffering, God spoke to a man named John who was praying on an island called Patmos. And God must have studied education or something because, like a good teacher, God used visuals and repetition to drive home Revelation’s main point: which is that Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. In other words, death isn’t the end. 

One of the images I find particularly compelling comes to us in chapter seven.

John looks up and sees a great crowd of witnesses too many to count—a ton of people from all over the world. All colors, all languages, standing before the throne of God.

Can you imagine what it would look like (what it would be like) to be this close to God’s throne? To stand alongside every Christian who ever lived?? That’s what the kingdom of God looks like…and that’s better than Duke Basketball.

Anyways, this great crowd is standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white with palm branches in their hands.

Palm Branches. (I swear, the strangest details jump out when I read the Bible…I read this passage the other day and all I kept wondering was ‘why the palm branches?’ If they didn’t mean something, they wouldn’t have been remembered, so what did they mean to John?)

Palm trees are actually mentioned quite often in the Bible—often symbolizing life:

·         They cover the Israelite temple to remind people of the Garden of Eden.

·         During the festival of booths (the Jewish celebration of harvest and thanksgiving) Leviticus instruct people to “rejoice with Palm branches”[1]

·         And in John, people waved palm branches to greet Jesus as Hosanna, king (Palm Sunday)[2]

But Palm branches were also part of Greco-Roman culture as signs of victory and triumph:

·         The Romans awarded palms to the champions of the games and they celebrated military successes with palm branches.

So when John tells people that this crowd was carrying palm branches, they don’t just look like a crazy mob with a bunch of sticks –they represented victory and life.

Furthermore, the Greek word for palm branch is phoinikes – like “phoenix”—that mythical bird who rises to life from ashes. These are God’s people who have risen from their suffering—risen from death. This crowd—this huge crowd shouting ‘Salvation belongs to God and the Lamb’—this crowd is eternally alive. That’s what the kingdom of God looks like.

Things like death, burn victims, the ICU, cancer, car accidents, starvation –these are not ok. They’re not part of God’s kingdom. And they’re not eternal. God’s kingdom is partially here because of what Christ has done, but it’s still coming. Eternity is coming.  

We’re also told that the people in this crowd have been through a great ordeal and that God is taking care of them. God is sheltering, guiding them and wiping away every tear from their eyes.’

When I picture this scene—God wiping away tears—it’s tender and gentle. The image comes straight from Isaiah (25:6-9 and 49:8-14) but notice what it's not saying....

            But it’s not saying that tears are bad. It’s not diminishing the pain or minimizing the suffering that has already happened. God gives space for grief.  

In this vision of redemption, It’s not like *snap* and all of a sudden, sadness isn’t allowed.

(don’t get me wrong—I don’t think God’s kingdom is a place of pain or sorrow. I do think it will be right and good in every sense of those words, but I don’t think God’s kingdom is about cheap, trite, or plastic happiness that covers everything up. I think it’s about peace.)

True peace only comes through healing. And sometimes healing hurts. Sometimes healing involves tears, but God promises that healing will come—that pain will end. This means that in the process—especially now--if we need to cry, let God be us. Because God is here—palms up—holding us close and gently wiping tears. God doesn’t cause suffering, but God is fully present in the midst of our sorrows.

So is God still God when people suffer? Is God still good? Yes and yes. God never leaves us.

Why do bad things happen? It’s because God’s kingdom isn’t here yet. It’s because, mostly, the world is still broken…but in Jesus, there’s hope for redemption.

I’m not going to pretend like this answer satisfies every one of our logical questions. It doesn’t explain everything, but I don’t think I would worship a god smaller than my understanding.

But I do worship the Alpha and Omega, the living one who wipes away our tears.

I do know that when you’re in a place of hurting or mourning or when you’re aching from the heart out, it’s  good to know that God cares. That God is present. And that God is bigger and stronger than anything we’ll ever face. When it feels like life is spinning out of control and nothing is steady, it might be just enough to be the kind of person who holds onto a palm branch and knows that God is victorious and that, as God’s people, we are never alone. More than anything, it’s important for us to remember that life matters and death isn’t the end.

Amen.

---

[1] Lev 23:40

[2] John 12:13

Religion is like ...a what?!?!

 "Religion is a questing after the more in life..." said Grant Wacker (quoting William James).

At least I thought it was William James but--trying to evade a misquote--I wanted confirm the quote's source with the omniscient google. (I confess it--I take notes with internet tabs open and ready. Guilty as charged.)

"Religion is..." I started, but before I could finish typing the quote, Google jumped to finish my sentence: "religion is like a penis!"

Normally, I'm a fan of the search-suggestion function, but I was a little taken aback. It's not a simile I would normally contemplate and I was torn between cracking up and gasping. Thankfully, since I was in the middle of class, I did neither.

After class (I didn't click the link in class just so you know) it turned out to be four lines of text--without images, thankfully--which were less offensive than anticipated. In general (but with more vivid syntax) it said that religion isn't something you should wave around in public or force onto others.

I'll be honest and admit that the vulgar juxtaposition of images was slightly amusing in a twisted, irreverent kind of way. I laughed (proud of myself for not being close-minded and religiously staunch) because I do find some truth in the statement. Religion isn't a topic that should be thrown carelessly into public conversation and I agree that, too often, faith is used as a weapon for superiority.

...but I was also a little offended. And it bothersome that it bothers me. Besides the obviously crude phallic imagery, the statement's tacit implication is that religion is a private matter. It's rude (possibly even shameful) to show your religion in public. Keep it hidden. 

And that's just selfish and wrong.

First of all, there is nothing shameful about faith. If the simile is correct in anything, it's that religion should become anatomically--dare I even say 'intimately'--part of your personal identity. It marks and shapes who you are as a person. If I mention my faith or read my Bible, it's because of who I am (who I am in Christ), and not in judgement of you. There's a huge difference between saying 'this is Christ in me' vs 'you suck and this is how you should change.' I'm not saying the latter, so instead of assuming offense, please listen. I'll try to do the same.


"So many people say that Christians are offensive and then turn around and offend Christians." said Angelo. "I always wonder where I should draw the line between standing up for my faith and taking insults in stride."

And secondly, it's a huge social/cultural misconception to assume that religion is a private matter.Once upon a time (before the great separation of church and state), religion was interwoven and fully integrated in everyday life. It served a civic function in the community and communal life grew with it....But now, it's almost like faith is a social accessory--a pashmina scarf--which adds flair when needed, but is easily removed (just in case). 

I'm not advocating papal rule and I think it's a good things that Baptism is no longer a requirement for citizenship, but should freedom of religion change religion itself? We've stepped so far away from the integration of church and state, that we've lost the communal aspect of Christianity. Religion is now limited to a certain time and place--like a grounded child banished to her room, or an abused wife who 'knows her place.' I'm being a bit melodramatic, but I do think that autonomous faith leads to consumerist worship and a non-committal church.

The bottom line is that religion is not a mantle I decide to take up for myself (or a cute little hat that I want every child to wear). It's not something I can take off  or turn off or hide so that others around me won't be offended. Christianity is a communal 'we' which--through the grace of God--is forming and informing the hope of me.

Trinitas...

What do you get when you combine loose biblical foundations with overly developed analytical scruples?
Centuries of ecclesial schism and trinitarian heresy!!! (But hey, now we have better creeds)

       ...and then Karl Barth returns in shining armour to 'rescue trinitarian theology from possible theological irrelevance.' (--Colle CCCD p136)

The free shining light is revealed and all is well on the Western front.