We Can Move Mountains!

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,

so that the mountains would quake at your presence... (Isaiah 64:1)

Isaiah's honest cry ushers us into the season of Advent. It is a poignant plea, giving voice to one of our deepest desires. God, if you would only rip open the heavens, come down here and make everything right again. This is shortly followed by verse three, a piece of scripture I'd always overlooked until our denominational worship material lifted its theme from these words. "When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence." It's as if the Israelites are suddenly remembering stories from their past of God's miraculous intervention and deliverance. They acknowledge that in hindsight, perhaps God has indeed already come down and shaken the very pillars of this earth in ways they had not expected.

In the book, The Boundary-Breaking God, Danielle Shroyer writes about the first time she enountered the idea that the universe is still expanding. Being a pastor, she connects that mind-blowing information with God.

"God's story is like that. Like the universe, it is always expanding, growing, moving, and being created, even this very moment....Through the stories of God's relationship with humanity, we see the same pattern Hubble used as the foundation of his Law--the further we travel into the story of God, the more we see light expanding outward."

Unless we happen to have access to some of the world's most powerful telescopes and are likewise proficient with complex mathematical equations, we will not be able to "see" this happening. But rest assured, science has proven in multiple ways, the universe is most definitely growing. In a similar way, God's Kingdom is growing, is expanding. The Bible is just one of the testaments to our "boundary-breaking God". But unless we access a different set of tools for vision - things like intentionality, history, curiousity, faith, patience - we will not be able to "see" this happening. Thankfully, untold believers throughout the history of human civilization have given credible witness to God's Kingdom expansion.

God is tricky. God doesn't like to be boxed in and doesn't necessarily perform according to human expectations or desires. God so often operates under the radar, flying low. Our family watched The Prince of Egypt last week. While the movie plays with some of the scriptural fine points, I find it true to the spirit of the biblical story. The movie opens with the enslaved Israelites laboring in the desert sands, crying out to God for deliverance, unaware that God has already set in motion the mechanism of their deliverance in the form of a mortally threatened infant named, Moses. (Doesn't that just totally break in a radical way with human expectation, sending a baby to be a Savior?.....) According to the movie, there's only one person who is able to really "see" what's going on, who is able to "see" God's Kingdom grow by a baby step as she stands guard over her baby brother and sees him safely delivered into the palace of the Pharaoh. Miriam stands hidden in the bulrushes and sings, "Brother, you're safe now and safe may you stay, for I have a prayer just for you: Grow, baby brother. Come back someday. Come and deliver us too..."

Neither is God's Kingdom limited to baby steps. God does indeed move mountains. But again, it's not in the way we expect. As the Israelites begin their joyful exodus from Egypt, another song from the movie has an adult Miriam singing, "Now we're not afraid, although we know there's much to fear. We were moving mountains long before we knew we could!"

God does not say to us, "For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, I will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for me." No, that's not what the text says. Matthew 17:20 - "For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you." God makes mountains quake through us.

I had the opportunity earlier this month to spend a day with the local school district's virtual education coordinator visiting the district's three satellite schools. All three are private, tiny, Christian boarding schools - a potential last chance for kids in trouble with the law, in trouble at home or in trouble because of home. All three schools are also amazing places, staffed with people committed to these kids and committed to this calling, despite really meager wages.

The final school we stopped at is called Victory Village. It's located in the country, east of Hutchinson, Kansas. It's founders, Bill and Carole Cowell, were Baptist ministers in this area of Kansas in the 1960's. One night they were called on to bail a 14 year old out of jail and this youth ended up part of their family. A year later they took in two teenage girls. A few months after that, their family grew by another three teenagers. In 1971, Heart Ministries was established and has grown from there. It is a boarding school for girls and accepts kids from all over the country. The school is equipped for an enrollment of around 20. The core approach is unconditional love. I was quite taken, during my short visit, with the family atmosphere that prevailed as well as the quality of the staff.

A few weeks ago Victory Village had a dedication service for their new chapel. The chapel's creation is a source of inspiration on its own. The story began with a monetary donation sufficient for a foundation and floor. And so with what I suppose must have been a healthy mix of faith and apprehension, the foundation was poured. The chapel remained a bare foundation for some time before the ball really got rolling. And then, as I understand, donations of time, material and expertise began arriving on the doorstep in a totally coordinated and timely fashion, from all across Kansas. Even the interior furnishings carry with them powerful stories of unexplainable coincidences and unexpected blessings. It is a beautiful space out there in the rural sand hills.

So there sits this little academy, accomplishing amazing things and most people living in that general area of the state don't "see" it happening. It hasn't been a flashy movement. It hasn't worked to crowd itself into the public eye. It has simply been quietly expanding God's Kingdom for the last 40 years. God has moved mountains through Bill and Carole Cowell's passionate and faithful vision.

My thoughts these days keep taking me back to church. Church is to be the people who are paying attention, who are working to "see", who are looking for opportunities to join with God in expanding God's Kingdom, who believe that mountains can indeed be moved. But to be church requires something of us. To sustain this kind of vision, we have to be willing to invest time, energy, passion, even comfort - or the whole point of church doesn't get off the ground. Being church is not easy. Church requires much of us. God's Kingdom does not expand on its own. As much as we might want God to rip open the heavens, come down here and do all the work for us, that's not how God works. When God sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in and with us, the ground shifted under civilization's feet and quite honestly, it hasn't stopped moving yet, because in that moment everything changed. We were all commissioned to be ministers, followers ordained by the Holy Spirit to partner with God in God's Kingdom expansion. But do we, the church, have this vision? Can we "see" in our future even the mere possibility of awesome deeds we did not expect?

A Prayer for the Christmas Season

I’ve been champing at the bit to turn on Christmas music, though so far I have resisted in part because of guilt.  Since materialism and consumerism have come to be associated with the Christmas season, I feel guilty for even liking Christmas.  But....now that we have cleared Thanksgiving Day, I have a confession to make: I love Christmas and I don’t think I should have to feel guilty about it anymore!

I love the decorations and the music.  I love the opportunity to seek out personalized and meaningful gifts for those I care about.  I love Christmas and it saddens me that this season has come to symbolize materialism.  Yet it seems that in our struggle to protect Christmas we sometimes make things worse.  Remembering “the reason for the season” becomes just another way of throwing our religion at others as if it were a weapon.  In the process we neglect the deeper meanings of Christmas.  

This time of year we all need a little celebration.  I will not deny that to my atheist friends or those of different faiths.  This holiday need not be about us against them...yet again.  

None of this clamor and fighting speaks to those for whom Christmas is a difficult time due to grief, financial hardships, loneliness, and so on.  But there is a message in Christmas that does.  It is this message that calls to my soul not just with anticipation but with impatient anticipation.  Thus, my prayer for this holiday season:

I have heard it said that people of Christian faith should be more about Easter and less about Christmas.  Easter is a powerful hope but it deals with things beyond this life.  It is a sure and certain hope but one that eludes my imagination, confounds my concrete mind.  The crucifixion is something I can wrap my mind around.  We have only to open our eyes and our hearts to the realities of the world and we recognize the darkness of Good Friday.   When the season is upon us I will dwell with great gratitude at the foot of the cross.  

But, Lord God, I want to stay for a while in Christmas where hope is something I can cradle to my chest.  I want to dwell here where music sings the promise of love, reminding me of those Mary moments in my life when it seems truth and love are about to burst forth from within and change the world.  

Let me hearken to Mary’s song and hear it as a radical claim awakening me for the sake of revolution, to grab hold of the Kingdom of God already present amongst us.  

Let me look into the face of the clearest revelation of your love and let him transform me so that when the “Slaughter of the Innocents” comes again upon this world I will stand up and say, “NO MORE.”

Let me dwell here in the incarnation of your love and let it change me so that materialism and consumerism are a distant clamor that has no claim on me.

Lord God, let me dwell here in Christmas for a while.  I know I am impatient but you understand how this holiday touches us.  Some call it sentimentality but you cradled each of us as you breathed forth the breath of life.  You know the power of that tender love.  It is life changing, not mere sentiment.

 So, let me draw out this Christmas season for a time and savor the message of love herein.  Then let me live that love with generosity and courage.  This I ask in the name of your son who is your love in human flesh, Jesus the Christ.  Amen.

The discipline of gratitude

I listened to an NPR report last week about the youngest board member for the U.S. Holocaust Museum, 23 year old Clemantine Wamariya. Wamariya was only 6 when the Rwandan Holocaust began. During a village rampage, Wamariya's older sister grabbed her hand and they fled into a field and escaped. For the next six years the sisters were moved from refugee camp to refugee camp, witnessing countless horrors along the way before eventually arriving in the United States. Today Wamariya, a student at Yale University, is an articulate and compassionate advocate for human rights and a nationally known speaker on genocide. She has a gentle voice always verging in the direction of smiles. When asked about how she remembers her childhood, she responds in a surprising way. She talks about joy. She remembers the large mango tree in her backyard that served as the gathering point for neighborhood children who would board the tree and take off in their imaginary train or spaceship or car. She remembers how beautiful Rwanda used to be. While traumatic memories will always be just a jolting reminder away, what she intentionally holds onto is the joy. And for those joyful memories she is grateful.

Gratitude is a paradox. We learn the most about gratitude from those who are enduring scarcity in some form or another and yet still maintain an attitude of thankfulness. You would think the most grateful people would be those who have the most - whatever the most might be - wealth, security, health. But that's just not how it seems to work.

I learn from an elderly woman in my congregation who lives with much daily pain but who says to me often, "I have it so much better than so many others." I learn from multiple friends who are materially poor but who seem to exude gratitude for all they have, for blessings like rich community life and good health.

There's a website hosted by the Occupy Movement. People active in the movement have posted, mostly handwritten, descriptions of their situations. Their circumstances are often dire. I am moved at the ways in which many of these Americans write about the harsh realities of their life yet conclude with the acknowledgment that while things are bad, they still count themselves as lucky - perhaps because they have a job or maybe simply because they still have a roof over their heads.

I think once you known scarcity or have had a really close brush with "not enough", it changes you. You become more in tune with genuine basic needs and are grateful when those needs are met. You can't take for granted something that at one time wasn't there for you. When you have struggled to find work for months or years, you don't take employment for granted. When you have lived on the streets or in a shelter, you don't take housing for granted. When you have gone to bed hungry too many nights in a row, you don't take meals for granted. when you suffer with chronic illness, you never take healthy, feel good days for granted. You learn gratitude the hard way, the way none of us wants to learn. But in the end, gratitude is there, stitched into the very fabric of your life.

It's different when your basic needs have always been met, when even "wants" get to be indulged on a regular basis. A healthy buffer between needs abundantly supplied and scarcity makes it easy to forget about gratitude. Y ou know the opposite of gratitude? It's actually not the tendency to take things for granted. The opposite of gratitude is entitlement.

While I'm sure there are many blessed people out there who do gratitude well, as a whole, the "have's" as opposed to the "have not's", struggle with feelings of entitlement. I know it's something I battle with. It's an insidious disease. We think we are entitled to wealth and all the benefits that come with it. We think we are entitled to an over consuming lifestyle and a toss away mentality. We think we are entitled to all the natural resources we can drain away from this earth. We think we are entitled to systems which operate according to "ends justify means" ethics so long as we are the beneficiaries. We think we are entitled to the best and most expensive medical procedures available on earth. We think we are entitled, knowing full well that if everyone in the world felt similarly entitled, human civilization's whole house of cards would collapse yesterday.

What makes us think we're so special? Is it because we work hard and so are deserving of our blessings? Hmmmm...we all know we can find countless examples of people who work just as hard as we do, if not much harder, who have not been similarly blessed in this life.

Is it because we believe the right things and feel as if we live our lives accordingly? We all know we can find countless examples of people who believe and act just as right as we do, if not better, who have not been similarly blessed in this life.

For some of us perhaps entitlement grows because we have never known lack and so it's easy to believe we are removed from some of the more difficult realities for some Divine intention or favor. For others, maybe scarcity was once real, long ago, but due to good choices, good beliefs, good actions, we were able to remove ourselves from those difficulties and have gone on to lead better and easier lives. The sense of entitlement is then nourished when we choose to compare ourselves to people who haven't made wise choices, who haven't worked hard, rather than acknowledging that so often all the hard work and right living in the world won't change certain realities.

What is the remedy for a sense of entitlement? Gratitude. What we need is the discipline of gratitude. Psalm 50 is titled, "An Acceptable Sacrifice". The psalm begins with God telling the people that all their burnt offerings, sacrificed animals, they're useless in God's sight because God possesses everything in this earth already. The poem builds to verse 14, "Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows to the Most High." The acceptable sacrifice is our sacrifice of thanksgiving.

A sacrifice is a giving of something that doesn't come naturally, a surrender that smites us a little, maybe in the pocketbook, maybe in our emotional headspace. But it stings. In this psalm, God calls us to sacrifice gratitude. Not how we typically think of gratitude.

Last week a young boy in our community had emergency surgery to remove a suspicious growth. The prognosis looks good. Though I haven't heard test results, the doctor believes the growth is benign. I can't tell you how many times over the last few days, in the midst of prayer for this child, I've also expressed gratitude for my children's good health. That's a very natural, unprompted expression of gratitude. However, when Jonathan is kicking his sister and when Rebecca reciprocates by taking a swing at her brother, gratitude for their good health is not what automatically comes to mind. That's discipline. A sacrifice of gratitude is called for as I'm gritting my teeth and stifling more "natural expressions".

Here's another example I'm even less proud of. As I read about hardship, real hardship in this country - unemployment, homelessness, hunger - I am so grateful for all the blessings in my life. That's a natural expression of gratitude. However, the month of October was tight for us financially. Car insurance and tags came due. We paid our first whopping propane bill. We needed to put new tires on the car. I didn't spend a lot of time being grateful for the ability to own and maintain not one, but three vehicles. I didn't spend a lot of time being grateful for the heat in our house we can afford to maintain. No, instead I got frustrated about needing to postpone a few purchases - new slacks for Jonathan, new tennis shoes for myself. I stewed about needing to steer clear of all thrift stores for the month because I always tend to spend money there on things I may...or as is usually the case, may not need. And I struggled with feelings of entitlement. In October, gratitude would have been a good discipline for me, a needed sacrifice.

We have family prayer time in the evenings. A regular component of my prayer has become, "Help us be grateful for all our blessings." The late Catholic priest and author, Henri Nouwen, writes, "Gratitude...goes beyond the 'mine' and 'thine' and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have it given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy."

That others are not similarly gifted is the great injustice of this life, a reality that makes me want to scream a lot of the time. Hopefully I can continue to learn how to pair this grief over injustice with an abiding thankfulness for life and all life throws at me - the good, the mundance, the hard. I am thankful for a holiday which places a premium on our ability to give thanks, to be grateful. But I pray we all might move to such a point in our journeys so as not to need a day set aside for thanksgiving, because thanksgiving has become the impulse of our daily.

The great spiritual master, Meister Eckhart, once said, "If the only prayer you say in your entire life is thank you, that will suffice." Thank you, God. Amen.

You Can Rock The World

There are moments in time when it seems that the greater the number of voices that are speaking, the more each individual voice can be heard.  For example, consider Rosa Parks.  One woman refusing to move from her bus seat would have been nothing more than an annoyance if the rumblings of the civil rights movement had not already begun.  No one would have heard her voice if not for the crowd that was murmuring, then speaking, then shouting and the world was changed.

For most of my life I have held on to the idea that one person can make a difference.  I have held onto that hope despite the evidence of my eyes that sent whispering thoughts to my mind saying, "Maybe a pebbles worth of difference, but real difference? Not likely."  Now, thanks to the internet, social media, the state of the economy, the Occupy Movement, and the struggles for freedom taking place throughout the world, that whisper has changed to "You can make a difference! Today!"  With the internet and social media, if a person has an idea or even just a word of support, that word can travel quickly to reach hundreds of people.  The state of the economy has made the economic injustice of the world almost undeniable.  The Occupy Movement says that we are not alone in our frustration and our desire for transformation.  The struggles for freedom around the world give us evidence that change can happen.

The many voices crying out for justice amplify your voice and your actions.  You can speak up and say, "NO ONE has a right to hoard billions of dollars worth of resources so long as ANYONE in this world is hungry." Even if you are one of the many who prefers to be a silent observer there are ways you can speak up.   You can speak up with your dollars and say, "I WILL NOT support mega banks and mega corporations at the expense of my neighbor."   You can speak up by being an agent of peace in your community.  When you hear the gossip begin, turn your back or turn the topic.  When someone is in need, let your impulse be generosity over judgment.

Then there are our places of worship.  I am only intimately acquainted with Christianity so that is the only faith to which I can speak.  My reading of the Gospels reveals to me that Jesus taught and healed.  Yet our communities of faith preach week after week and only sprinkle in the occasional service projects or giving opportunity.  Why?  As followers of Jesus we have heard that we are saved by the love of God, it is only right that we speak that Good News.  Yet Jesus did not walk about on this earth only telling people about someday.  Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God is amongst us now.  And he healed and healed and healed.   Jesus called us to feed his sheep, to give the thirsty a drink, and the naked clothing as if they were him.  Our actions working to feed all of God's sheep should be just as much a part of who we are as our worship.  Yet, most often, this has not been the case.  Now a movement is afoot to move our society away from "let's see who can get the most" toward "let's see that all have enough."  Should we stand silent?  Jesus says, "Feed my sheep," (John 21)

One person can make a difference.  With Christ at work within you, your voice will rock the world.

Whether you're a Christian or not. 

Listening for a new world breathing

I had supper with a friend last Tuesday evening at her home in Wichita. As we sat and enjoyed our meal, my eyes kept wondering to a poster on her dining room wall which featured a quote by the Indian writer and social activist, Arundhati Roy. "Another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe."

Last Monday, I offered the meditation at the funeral of a dear friend and parishioner, Larry Hesed. Larry was a mentor, a spiritual guide for many. He inspired a large and diverse community across the United States with humility and gentleness paired with an unwavering impulse and drive for peace and justice in this life, in this world. His was a life cut short by cancer. We already miss him very much.

Towards the end of Larry's funeral meditation, I said, "What is our calling in this life? I believe we are all given gifts, given unique abilities to work for and reveal God's reign in this world. But we're only given glimpses, now and again, that our efforts are not in vain. Thankfully, those glimpses sustain and empower."

Following this funeral, I was grumpy, emotional and tired last Tuesday. Despite my frame of mind, I was gifted with with several of these powerful glimpses.

Glimpse 1: At my mom's encouragement, I watched a 5 minute youtube video of a 12 year old girl addressing the United Nations. At the time, I didn't realize this was footage from 1992 and that this girl is now a socially engaged adult. Her name is Severn Suzuki. Twenty some years ago, she came before the U.N. as a representative for The Environmental Children's Organization (ECO) and she stood up there and boldly called all the adults in the room to task for their gross negligence as our world's leaders. Here's an excerpt from her speech,

"I'm only a child yet I know we are all part of a family, five billion strong, in fact, 30 million species strong and we all share the same air, water and soil--borders and governments will never change that.

"I'm only a child yet I know we are all in this together and should act as one single world towards one single goal...

"I'm only a child yet I know if all the money spent on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental answers, what a wonderful place this earth would be!

"Do not forget why you're attending these conferences, who you're doing this for - we are your own children. You are deciding what kind of world we will grow up in....My father always says, 'You are what you do, not what you say.' Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown ups say you love us. I challenge you, please make your actions reflect your words."

Surely 12 year old Severn was a foreshadowing of what was to come. She sounded current to me, because children today take for granted a sense of global connectedness that adults too often lack. My children, ages 7 and 9, are aware of world events. When they offer their evening prayers, my son usually includes prayers for Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Turkey, Haiti, Japan, the Middle East and Joplin, Missouri. He remembers them all. He doesn't let go, like my husband and I do after a few weeks. He keeps stringing them together to form his prayer chain. My kids are keenly aware of environmental issues and are taught to recycle and compost in their rural public school in Kansas. Though as a mother I tend to see my children as exceptional, what I'm describing here is more what I sense is emerging as characteristic of our world's youngest ones, the mentality of their generation. This is great cause for hope.

"Another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe."

Glimpse 2: I listened to radio coverage of the Penn State scandal last Tuesday and have continued to follow this story. I grieve for the young boys who have lost so much. Sexual abuse, abuse in all its forms, is a trademark of the old order, that ruled by the forces of chaos and violence. But I have been encouraged by the sports media.

In an emotional interview, Penn State alum and sports analyst, Matt Millen said, "But this is more than just a program, this is more than a football legacy. This is about people. And if we can't protect our kids, we as a society, are pathetic. So, that's where I stand on it...Man's inhumanity towards man is just mind-boggling."

Sports columnist, Pat Forde writes, "Joe Paterno, a man who until last week could make a claim to being the greatest coaching institution in the history of college athletics, was terminated Wednesday night with a phone call. Forty-six years as head football coach at Penn State ended when he was informed...that his services were no longer needed. Effective immediately.

"It's the way some employers would treat a middle manager, not a legend. But in the end, maybe that's heartlessly fitting - after all, Paterno abdicated his powerful role and played the part of a mid-level employee in passing the buck up the ladder when informed in 2002 that an alleged pedophile had raped a boy in the showers of his football complex. The crucial lack of leadership in a moment of dire crisis led to the end of his leadership at Penn State."

Sexual abuse is an issue I have too many personal connections to. And I have become jaded at society's response - it's tendency to cover-up the crime, deny the suffering of abuse victims, even defend the perpetrators. To have the sporting institution of this country, without equivocation, perceive the real victims in this whole mess of awfulness and to publicly take their stand only with those who were abused, I see that as an emerging sensitivity to injustice and the plight of the most vulnerable in this society.

"Another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe."

Glimpse 3: This Penn State radio report was followed by an update on the situation in Syria. The government there continues to violently suppress the uprising of it's people. This is terrible, but despite the tyranny, the abuse of power, the citizenry remains steadfast. This last year we have been witness to something very new and very powerful in the history of human civilization. We call it, "The Arab Spring". Uprisings, revolutions, these aren't new. But the manner in which these particular revolutions happened were and are new in that technology has so thoroughly connected us, we can join forces and act in a way that defies political boundaries. And the ways in which the revolutionaries went about seeking change is also telling. These were grassroots efforts, largely nonviolent and leadership was broadly shared. It is commonly acknowledged that the Arab Spring gave birth to the Occupy Movement, another global phenomenon made possible in large part by our technological connectedness.

I pray that the people of Syria might continue to find the strength and resolve to make their voices heard, voices insistent on addressing the abuse of power as they lift up the call for justice.

"Another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe."

Thank goodness for these glimpses on Tuesday, because on Wednesday I was plunged right back into the maelstrom of community gossip and controversy, inundated with narrow-minded opinions and the fear that keeps us so grounded to this reality.

One of Larry's favorite scripture verses was from Amos 5, "Let justice roll down like the waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream." Peter seems to answer Amos in one of last week's lectionary texts (2 Peter 3:13), "But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home." This sounds great, but I'm tired of waiting. I like Jesus' vision much better. The disciples ask Jesus how to pray and Jesus says, "Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:9-10)." Exactly. God's Kingdom comes and God's will is done on earth. We don't have to wait. It's already happening!

When I drove away from our church after the funeral last Monday, I was so grateful for my congregation. When I am with my church community, it is so much easier for me to believe another world is possible and that she's on her way. Some Sunday mornings, if I listen carefully, I can hear her breathe. I've been wrestling with the question, "What do we need from church?" It occurred to me this week, this is what I need. I need church to be the community that offers a glimpse of God's Kingdom being realized here and now and empowers me to go out into the week looking for more evidence and seeking out ways to be a part of that movement. My rural congregation is ever so tiny and faces seemingly insurmountable obstacles in its hope to survive. But I continue to feel driven to fight for this church, to believe in it and place my hope in who we are and who we can become, because I so often hear this new world breathing when I am in this God-infused community. This is not to be taken for granted, but is to be cherished and shared. I pray that we might all be similarly blessed with glimpses of God's Kingdom unfolding in our lives and in our experiences of church. May God's will be done...here....on earth.

"Another world in not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe." Amen.

God Bless America?

Many people whom I love and respect are fiercely patriotic.  Recently I implied that saying "God bless America" might not be particularly helpful.  This implication could be frowned upon by those who are fiercely patriotic.   So, I thought it might be worthwhile to clarify my position on this.

I love my country.  How could I not love this land when I am surrounded by beauty everyday?  I am grateful for our many freedoms and our abundance of resources.  Yet, the phrase "God bless America" makes me cringe.

Let me use a football analogy to explain why.  When a football player crosses himself or kneels or expresses thanks to God during a football game, I am never sure whether I should applaud or groan.  What does it mean?  If this is the football player giving thanks to God for the strength of his body, the courage of his heart, and the fortune of his life that he is able to successfully and profitably play a game he loves, then that is only appropriate.  If it is thanking God that he made a touch down, that his team is winning, that the other guy missed, or (triple cringe) that God is on his side, then YUCK!  On the other hand, perhaps it is only a way of celebrating the moment, thanking God for how great it feels to have made a touchdown.  I can deal with that.

Similarly with the blessing of our country.  It is fine to be grateful for what we have.  It is fine to ask God for further blessings.  It is not fine to pray that God bless us and not that country over there.

Furthermore, what I was really trying to get at in my earlier blog was that "blessing America" is not the role of the church.  At least it is not the church's only role and certainly not its most needed role.  The church needs to be calling this country to compassion and justice.

So, I suppose I am not against saying "God bless America" but we need to be clear about what that means.  It sounds arrogant. We are after all ignoring an entire continent, our wonderful neighbors to the north, and our wonderful neighbors to the south, just by calling ourselves "Americans." And it sounds like, "bless us and not them."  Especially when it is accompanied by "mess with us and we'll kick your booty."

But, it doesn't have to mean that.  If you mean to thank God for our blessings and ask that they may continue, I can deal with that.  If you mean "God bless the United States of America with compassion and wisdom so that we may make the world a better place through generosity and wise council," then I join you with my own whole hearted, "God bless America."  God bless us also with creativity, courage, open-heartedness, and ingenuity.

If this is what you mean then I join you.  And I imagine the poor and the outcast of the world would join you as well.  Lord, in your mercy, let us be blessed to be a blessing.

People of Christian Churches Confess to People of The Occupy Movement

Reflecting on Lynn's blog, "Why Will YOU Occupy?" from earlier this week, I pondered how the church could best respond to the Occupy Movement.  Confession seems appropriate.  I was inspired to write the below.  

People of Christian Churches Confess to People of The Occupy Movement

We confess that we have too often cried “God bless America,” too often claimed our country as “Christian,” and too seldom called our country to repentance when its ways have strayed far from the ways of Christ.

We confess that we have sometimes shied away from preaching and doing justice when we feared it would detract from the offering plate.

We confess that while often generously bandaging wounds and feeding the hungry, we have seldom addressed the systemic injustices that created the wounds and the hunger. 

We confess that we have focused on personal morality while corporate immorality devastated our economy and our lives.

We confess that we have allowed fear to curb our generosity, judgment to quench our compassion, and despondency to render us powerless.

We confess that we have avoided the public sphere and politics, or have chosen sides based upon particular issues or trends, rather than standing up to decry a system of greed that has lost any sense of serving the people.

We confess these things with humility knowing we had not the courage to speak up until you did.  Therefore, we will not claim this confession for any particular denomination or church body lest we take credit where no credit is due.  We will simply share this confession as people of Christian faith.  We will lend our presence to the Occupy movement merely as fellow citizens, not waving denominational banners or using the movement as PR for Christianity.  We will find our lost humility and serve God’s people....all of God's people, without an eye to our own self-interest.  We stand with the 99% speaking out against greed for the sake of the worldwide 100%.

I confess these things as part of the larger Christian Church.  If you would like to join me in the confession or express your support to those who do, please comment below or  "like" this.  Please also consider sharing this so that others may confess as well and so that those who have been hurt may hear our confession.