The Dynamic Duo

The first baptism I ever performed was in a church. It totally freaked out those who came to be baptized. We were meeting in a school but walked across the street to a church for the baptism. I lacked imagination for what a jolt that would be to the system of our community. The church had graciously allowed us to use their baptismal font after their traditional 11 am service. Perfect. They would leave and we would arrive - no problem. Except that my friend freaked out. She was intimidated by the steeple, its people, and the formality of the environment. We survived the trauma. Barely.

Her shame attack was associated with past experiences in a church that sounded more like John the Baptist than Jesus. Remember? John was all about repentance. He went around in grunge attire shouting, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." People traveled great distances to take him up on his offer to wash away their past and start fresh.

To us, John the Baptist sounds like he is issuing some sort of threat. Why can blame us? That is how it is presented in many churches. To the people who followed John this was a promise. My friend had years of triggered messaging from a church that preached a message of fire and brimstone to her, a young woman who feared she was dancing very close to the flames. Her experience resulted in shame and guilt but their experience, those who heard the message of John, was one of pardon. My friend heard her pastor demanding that she own up to her depravity, ego and pride. But this message was ineffective because these were not her core issues!

My friend's core issue was hopelessness. John the Baptist preached the message of repentance BEFORE Jesus stepped up and taught us the concept of grace. This was not a haphazard or mixed message from God to us. God gets us. God is not focused on us as miserable sinners; he is well aware that what we need is faith in HIS commitment and power to renew and restore what humanity breaks. Soon the weather will be warm and our community will return to the water for another opportunity to wash away the past and start fresh. Our usual spot is the James River. The bottom is rocky, the water often brown with swirling mud; I usually see a snake or two observing our ritual. I'm always glad when it is over and we all manage to safely return to shore. It seems more fitting, somehow, to enter into those rocky rapids with a little fear and trembling.

The Death of Illusion

Every disappointment offers the possibility for a decent reframe. Now, we can rush to cover our angst and anxiety by finding a way to reframe negatives into positives. I so wish I had this natural capacity! But there are other options. We can consider the possibility that disillusion is the death of illusion and when put that way, it may be better to excavate for a more profound rewrite of our expectations than to spackle over the deep cracks in our foundational walls of belief.

Jesus did respond to John's question posed in the gospel of Matthew. (When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" Matthew 11:2 NIV)

He asked his disciples to go and tell John what their observations of Jesus are - the blind are given their sight back, the lame are walking around unassisted, the lepers are getting a thorough cleaning, the deaf can now hear and the dead are raised. Oh, and the poor have good news brought to them while everyone who manages to not take offense at Jesus is blessed. (Matthew 11:2-10)

Blessed are those who see what God is doing because they have let go of their illusions about what they think. he should be accomplishing. Blessed are those who find joy in the ONE who is healed, the few who manage to not take offense at Jesus' outrageous claims to love the unlovely. Blessed are those who set aside their expectations and pick up on the vibe that Jesus keeps throwing down. The truth is, I had a poor image of God. I expected him to beckon to my call. He is not so easily distracted.

What expectations of God, yourself and others are tripping you up these days?

Disillusioned

Anyone who knows me understands that as of late, I have questioned my purpose for living. I have asked my husband and children, "Did I ruin our lives when I agreed to leave our cozy nest at 'big church' and strike out on this pilot project in 1999 that is still chugging along in 2021?" No one has exactly given me a ringing endorsement that no, indeed not, I did not ruin our lives. Instead, they have hugged me and allowed me to process my own grief and suffering with a lot of support. And peanut butter.

As usual, the scriptures find a way to sit with me.

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" Matthew 11:2 NIV

John the Baptist, the guy who foretold the coming of Christ and preached repentance with vim and vigor, wants to know what the heck is going on here. He's in prison NOT for following his call to declare the coming of the Lord. He's locked up because he condemned Herod for marrying his brother's wife. Soon John's head will roll, quite literally, because a wicked mother encouraged her daughter to ask for his head on a platter FOR HER BIRTHDAY! Sheesh. Jesus is NOT doing what John expected the Messiah to accomplish.

Jesus was SUPPOSED to end political oppression. Jesus was SUPPOSED to bring in a new ruler and a new authority. Jesus was SUPPOSED to clean up the corruption and get rid of the bad guys.

Last night Pete and I were out walking and I was reviewing my expectations for the last 22 years of my life. Early on, I would end most messages with a rousing, "We can do this!" Until I learned we could not. It seemed so...simple and clear to me back then and in some ways I see it the same today. IF we could pull together and commit to sacrificing for the greater good, we COULD make a difference. We COULD provide resources for suffering families. And - we can and we do. But it is not at all like I expected.

I want treatment to work and I want people to want to work at getting healed. I do. And treatment does work - sometimes. And people are able to manage their use disorders - more often than we hear about on social media. But I want it all NOW. No more deaths by suicide; no more overdoses; no more families ripped apart. Surely Jesus, who talks more about love than sin, who hangs out with my kind of people, who performs miracles and just all around GETS IT - wants the same thing?

Here's what we end up with. We end up with a God who supports us while we find our own answers. We get a God who allows us the privilege of living with the consequences of our actions. We end up with a God who holds us in his big hand when we wonder if we have ruined our life without feeling the need to offer false comfort.

Man, this faith stuff is a lot harder than I thought it was when I used to sing, totally off-key, "Trust and obey, for there is no other way, to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey." Tomorrow, we'll consider why this is not bad news. Stay tuned.

A Word of Encouragement

I want to encourage you with the encouragement that has been offered to people from Jesus...by example and exhortation and through story. There is nothing in the gospel about being successful. Preach him crucified. The confounding mystery of the resurrection - God breathing life into dry, dead bones, continues to be mysterious. God does not show us everything. But way beyond our capacity to know and see and understand and articulate is this true thing: God can work with whatever we give him. He takes our weakness our fear, our trembling and says, "I can work with that."

But let's not get but so excited about this. We do not what a sneaky form of heresy to slip in among us. We do not want to confuse God's mysterious work of resurrection with a form of narcissism that claims that God's power to save us includes God's willingness to make us rich or better than those "other people" - you know, the ones who sin. Not our sins, but the BIG sins. (Please know that this is sarcasm.) The gospel message is not one of "I was once dead but now I am alive and that makes me able to decide who the real sinners are among us." That is not the story.

So you ask - what do we do? What does it mean for us to live Jesus crucified? Here is all I have to offer. We try. We do the best we can with what we have to work with. We use the resources we have to figure out what that means. WE JUST SHOULD NOT KID OURSELVES INTO THINKING THAT WE KNOW WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON. (A paraphrase of Barbara Taylor Brown from her sermon, "In Weakness and Much Trembling".) If no one else will tell you this, hear me loud and clear: some of our most dismal failures please God very much. And I want you to know that in our community, we will be known and maybe criticized for who we love and that's ok. We know that we do not know what we are doing and that no one really knows what this resurrection life really means, wrapped as it is in the grand mystery of God. So even if we are dead wrong - God loves to bring dead things back to life.

Jesus was a huge disappointment in his day. So was Paul. So are we all. There will always be someone who is disappointed in you and me. But here's what I want us to join together as a community and preach: that when people hang out with us, in spite of all the ways we are a disappointment - no handbell choir, no stained glassed windows, no fancy preachers, in all those limitations here is one thing we do: we welcome the stranger. We offer the gift of hospitality. We do not kid ourselves into thinking that we know what is really going on but we never forget that God works with whatever we offer Him.

The Post-Christian Era

Did you know that many observers of all things Christian have labelled the age we live in the post-Christian era? They make a compelling case that we have lost our consensus about what it means to be Christian. We have lost the language of faith that we once thought we had in common. Every major denomination in our country today is in a fight of some sort or other that proves that we have lost this thing called consensus.

In response to all this deconstruction, the modern day church has turned to business techniques like market studies, mass mailing and telemarketing to increase church membership. It works too! There are plenty of examples of mega churches who do fill those pews and the coffers to the brim. They host Easter egg hunt using air drops to spread the good news - a modern day tradition I am totally fascinated by! And let's get real here - don't we have the same concerns at Northstar Community? How will we fund our mission we ask? Isn't that question awfully close to the one about getting lots of butts in the pews? These are legitimate questions that people in charge of such things must ask. But at what cost?

Barbara Brown Taylor says this about such things:

"All of these developments have given me reason to think hard about all the things we do to get people into church. Does the end justify the means, or are we playing a dangerous game with the gospel, by substituting our own expertise for the power of God?"

p.132, Teaching Sermons on Suffering

Paul's response? Preach him as crucified. Now, is that guy crazy or what? Here's more about Paul. The guy had limitations! He had a mysterious thorn in the flesh that served as a big limiter. He was not considered a great preacher, although people did not criticize his writing too much. A second-century source "The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Tecla" described him as "a man of small stature, with bald head and crooked legs...with eyebrows meeting and nose somewhat hooked." And yet, with all these limitations the guys still managed to start at least 7 churches, write 13 letters quoted even today and several speeches found in the book of Acts that were impressive by any standards.

So why preach him crucified? Maybe it was because Paul also assessed himself like this:

"I stood in front of you with weakness, fear, and a lot of shaking. My message and my preaching weren't presented with convincing wise words but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power. I did this so that your faith might not depend on the wisdom of people but on the power of God."

1 Corinthians 2:3-5 CEB

What, I wonder, is so terrible about acknowledging our own weakness, fear and shaking? What have we misunderstood, or forgotten about the Easter message that holds us back from expressing our own vulnerability and limitations?