Our Divided Lives

Whoever walks in integrity walks securely,

but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out.
--Proverbs 10:9 NIV

This week in my e-mails I will be reflecting on the book A Hidden Wholeness: TheJourney Toward an Undivided Life by Parker Palmer.  Palmer is one of the authors who has guided my own faith journey, and I often recommend his writings to people questioning the direction of their lives.  In this book, he describes the costs of compartmentalizing our innermost identities and beliefs away from the outward actions and false identities we present to others.

In A Hidden Wholeness, he writes,

Afraid that our inner light will be extinguished or our inner darkness exposed, we hide our true identities from each other.  In the process we become separated from our own souls.  We end up living divided lives so far removed from truth we hold within that we cannot know the integrity that comes from being what you are.

When our lives become divided, our inner self and real convictions separate from our outer selves and actions, we pay a price and so do those around us.

Palmer provides examples of living the divided life:

• We refuse to invest ourselves in our work, diminishing its quality and distancing ourselves from those it is meant to serve
• We make our living at jobs that violate our basic values, even when survival does not absolutely demand it
• We remain in settings or relationships that steadily kill our spirits
• We harbor secrets to achieve personal gain at the expense of other people
• We hide our beliefs from those who disagree with us to avoid conflict, challenge, and change.
• We conceal our true identities for fear of being criticized, shunned or attacked.

He describes how these examples come from something deeper than a lack of ethics.  In today’s culture, ethics can become merely an external code of conduct, a “moral exoskeleton” that we can slip off whenever it suits us.  Inner integrity is necessary to join our actions to our deepest selves.

Palmer wrote A Hidden Wholeness, about fifteen years ago when the news headlines still featured corporate scandals like Worldcom and Enron, the financial crisis was only beginning to reveal the extent immoral lending practices by the nation’s largest banks would have on the economy, and the clergy sexual abuse scandal was revealed with its horrific consequences for thousands of children.  In our present time, things have not become any better.  In a world of “alternative facts” where blatant deception is presented as “truth,” our culture demonstrates the consequences of people living divided lives.

Palmer uses the image of a blizzard to describe the confusing times we find ourselves in. 

The was a time when farmers on the Great Plains, at the first sign of a blizzard, would run a rope from the back door out to the barn.  They all knew stories of people who had wandered off and been frozen to death, having lost sight of home in a whiteout while still in their own backyards.

The blizzard of our culture “swirls with economic injustice, ecological ruin, physical and spiritual violence.”  The confusion of our times may leave us thinking there is no hope for things like “truth and justice, love and forgiveness” to guide our lives.  Yet, Palmer declares we remain in “the soul’s backyard, with chance after chance to regain our bearings.”  The guide rope in our “blizzards” comes in the form of “trustworthy relationships, tenacious communities of support.”  Such relationships should happen in a faith community (sadly the often do not), but also come in support groups, faithful work colleagues and healthy friendships and families.

Most of all, our ultimate guide rope comes from the One who created us and in whose image we are made.  God knows our true selves, because God knows us best of all.  The God made manifest in Jesus Christ does not stand apart from us as a punishing judge but comes near to us offering grace upon grace to guide us back to who we were created to be.  As humans, we may always struggle to discover the wholeness God offers us, choosing to live with our actions divorced from our deepest truths, but God remains with us along the way assuring us we can discover ways of being that cause less pain to ourselves and others, new ways of peace and joy.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

The Grace of Being Known

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;I have called you by name, you are mine.--Isaiah 43:1 NRSV

In his book, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, Father Gregory Boyle tells stories of his ministry with former gang members in one of the poorest parts of Los Angeles.  Politicians and police describe these gang members as animals, but Boyle discovered most of them were teenagers who had suffered horrible physical, sexual and emotional abuse by the adults in their lives.  Having been treated as worthless, they lived as if they were worthless.  Boyle says a young person joins a violent gang not because he or she wants to live a certain kind of life but rather because they want to die.

At Homeboy Industries, the ministry started by Boyle and the church he serves, Dolores Mission, gang members are given a chance to discover what they never knew before: self worth.  Teenagers who were formerly hardened and violent discover the childhood they never knew.  They discover safety, people who care for them and freedom to laugh and have fun.  They also discover they are not the useless objects they were told they were.  Sometimes, these realizations come simply because someone know their name.

Before coming to Dolores Mission, Boyle taught at a Catholic high school serving inner city youth.  On his first day he asked a veteran teacher for advice.  He describes the conversation this way:

She’s at her desk, reading the morning Times.

“It’s my first day of teaching, “I say to her, “Give me some advice.”

She doesn’t turn from her paper but holds out her right hand, displaying two fingers.

“Two things,” she says, “one: know all their names by tomorrow.  Two: it’s more important that they know you than that they know what ya know.”

Boyle remembered this advice when he came to Dolores Mission.  At first when he approached the gang members standing around in groups on every corner, he received a cold reception.  Yet, over time as he visited the gang members when they were locked up or wounded in the hospital, things began to change.  Yet one young man nicknamed Cricket never warmed up to him.  Cricket would walk away whenever Boyle showed up and only return to the huddle of guys once the priest left.  So Boyle investigated Cricket’s background and learned his real name was William.

One day I walk up to this group of gang members, with Cricket among them, and he doesn’t disappear on me.  I shake hands with all of them, and when I get to Cricket, he actually lets me shake his hand.

“William,” I say to him, “How you doin’?  It’s good to see ya.”

William says nothing.  But as I walk away (I always made a point of not staying very long), I can hear William in a very breathy age-appropriate voice, say to the others, “Hey, the priest knows my name.”

Boyle goes on to describe what this encounter says about God:

“I have called you by your name.  You are mine,” is how Isaiah gets God to articulate this truth.  Who doesn’t want to be called by name, “known.”  The “knowing” and the “naming” seem to get at what Anne Lamott calls our “inner sense of disfigurement.’

As misshapen as we feel ourselves to be, attention from another reminds us of our true shape in God.

I believe one of the most important things churches can do is acting as a place where people are known.  A church should be a community where God’s “knowing” love is made real.  People who have been abused, belittled and objectified can find in a healthy church a place where, as the song goes, “everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.”  The power of feeling welcomed and being seen can heal the deep hidden wounds of our souls.

Everyone who walks into a healthy church should leave with the experience that the people they encountered saw them and knew them as having worth.  Unhealthy churches are ones who have forgotten, if they ever knew, the life-changing power they have been given by God to bless those whom God has led their way.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

When Churches Play It Safe

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
--Matthew 5:11-12 NRSV

Over the years I’ve received a steady stream of hate mail.  Sometimes the hate mail comes from an anonymous church member slipping a critical note under my office door.  Other times the hate mail arrives in my email inbox from a church member with an ax to grind about something I said (or usually that they think I said) in a sermon.  My favorite hate mail is the kind that actually arrives in the mail, usually neatly typed from some “Christian” somewhere correcting my theology.  Usually this latter type shows up when I have spoken publicly about justice issues, especially when I have spoken publicly as a faith leader about equal rights and inclusion for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people. 

I feel I must be doing something right if somebody gets mad, because I’m using my privilege to speak up for people being marginalized or oppressed, because that’s what Jesus did and look what happened to him.

I’m not talking about persecution in the way TV preachers and members of the Religious Right talk about it—as if a secular humanist world is out to destroy their faith.  Instead I’m talking about the kind of hate mail that comes when somebody feels their status or beliefs are threatened when groups they condemn are treated like human beings.  A lot of folks who call themselves Christian act as if God’s love is in limited supply; if God shows extravagant grace to somebody else that means less for them.  Such folks have found their identities in condemning others rather than in receiving grace from God.  If something I’ve said or done makes such people angry, then I feel like I’ve done my job as a minister.

Jesus demonstrated compassion (literally “suffering with”) humanity, and that kind of oneness threatens everyone who profits from keeping people divided from one another.  This is why Jesus tells his followers to expect opposition and even persecution.  People who believe their well-being depends upon other people’s oppression never respond kindly to having their zero-sum game called into question

In his book, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, Father Gregory Boyle tells the story of what happened when his church Dolores Mission in east Los Angeles declared itself a sanctuary church in the late 1980’s.  They began providing shelter for undocumented people from Mexico and Central America, and as is the case any time a church truly helps oppressed people, the media showed up.  So did opposition. 

One day, Boyle showed up to find the words “Wetback Church” spray painted on the church building.   He went to a previously scheduled meeting with women of the church, and he told them he would get it cleaned it up.  One of the women named Petra who rarely spoke in meetings suddenly took charge.

“You will not clean that up.  If there are people in our community who are disparaged and hated and left out because they are mejados (wetbacks), then we shall be proud to call ourselves a wetback church.”

Boyle writes that Petra and the other women “didn’t just want to serve the less fortunate, they were anchored in some profound sense of oneness with them and became them.”  He goes on to say that this type of compassion is what Jesus demonstrated.  “The strategy of Jesus is not centered in taking the right stand on issues, but rather in standing in the right place—with the outcast and those relegated to the margins.’

I think part of the reason churches are dying in America today and why we are less culturally relevant than ever is because we have played it safe for too long.  Once upon a time, your status in your community depended in part upon what church you belonged to.  Once church membership was as essential to fitting in to suburban life as belonging to a neighborhood association or a rotary club.  Being a part of a church, meant fitting in and fitting in meant security.  Yet, such security, safety and fitting in cannot be found when we read the Gospels.  Younger generations searching for meaning and purpose no longer want what their parents wanted from a church, and maybe that is a good thing.  Maybe our expectations of what a church should be were reflections of a white suburban mindset rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I think it is fair to ask if a church never faces any opposition or persecution on behalf of people who are marginalized and oppressed really a church?  If a church really wishes to show compassion for other people the way Jesus did, then it will ultimately cost that church something.  There is a difference between charity (where one person gives something they probably didn’t need anyway to someone of less power and means who needs that something desperately) and compassion which says we are one, we are in this together and what we each have we share with one another. 

A church that operates with compassion like Jesus understands that in God’s eyes there is no difference between the person serving and the person being served.  That kind of radical reframing of power, status and influence upsets people who depend upon such things to determine their own worth.  They will not react with kindness but with outrage. 

But here’s the beautiful truth that Jesus understood and what he gives to us if we will only receive it: the joy we receive from demonstrating compassion for others far surpasses any hate we receive for doing so.  This is why Jesus said, “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you.”

A church that doesn’t receive hate mail is a church that has played it too safe.  A church that has played it too safe has missed out on the joy Jesus has promised.

Grace and Peace,

Chase

Ripping the Roof Off of the Church

And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. 
--Mark 2:4 NRSV

In my sermon this past Sunday, I shared some stories from one of my favorite books, Tattoos on the Heart: The Powerof Boundless Compassion by Gregory Boyle.  Boyle is a Jesuit priest who has spent decades working with Latino/Latina/Latinx gang members in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Los Angeles.  Boyle and the church he serves, Dolores Mission, began a ministry called Homeboy Industries which gives those wishing to leave gang life jobs, life skills training, addiction counseling, mentoring and spiritual direction.  Homeboy Industries grew to include a bakery (Homeboy Bakery), a café (Homegirl Café) and a silkscreen and embroidery shop (Homeboy Silkscreen & Embroidery).  The inspiring story of this work is told in Boyle’s writings.  You can also find documentaries about the story (Father G and the Homeboys and G-Dog) on numerous streaming services as well as many interviews with and speeches by Boyle on YouTube. 

In the Gospels, there is a story of Jesus healing a paralyzed man.  Jesus is in a house filled with people wanting to hear his teachings.  Some men have a friend who is paralyzed and want to bring him to Jesus but they can’t get past the crowds and into the house.  So they climb onto the roof of the house and break through the roof.  They lower their paralyzed friend down to Jesus who forgives the man’s sins and heals him. 

Boyle uses this story as an image of how all of us as individuals and as communities of faith must expand our understandings of compassion.  “In Scripture, Jesus is in a house so packed that no one can come through the door anymore. So the people open the roof and lower this paralytic down through it, so Jesus can heal him. The focus of the story is, understandably, the healing of the paralytic. But there is something more significant than that happening here. They're ripping the roof off the place, and those outside are being let in.” 

As a Jesuit priest, Boyle was sent to Dolores Mission in the 1980’s; it was considered the poorest church in the diocese.  Could there have been a church considered less likely to have the resources to minister to the overwhelming needs of their impoverished and violence-ridden community?  Yet, Boyle says God provided the means for the church to help transform the community around it, once the church began to “rip the roof off” and let those on the outside in. 

Once the church stopped seeing the young gang members as someone else’s children and began to see them as “our” children, God began providing resources to minister to the young people involved in gangs all around the church.  Once the church began to see that it was their responsibility to make up for the generations of adults who had failed their children, something changed and God began to bless them with donations, allies, partnerships with government, private sector and non-profit agencies that enabled transformation to occur.  What had seemed like a hopeless situation was transformed when Dolores Mission ripped its roof off and no longer saw itself as somehow separate from the world around it.

I’m not sure when churches in America began to operate like little islands unto themselves, but whenever it happened, we now are reaping what we have sown.  Churches stopped being a part of their own communities; they began existing of and for their own members, little clubs that offered little of value to the world around them.  Churches began to care about new members only for the sake of keeping their own club houses alive instead of offering anything to others because it was simply the right thing to do according to Jesus.  The result is a whole lot of dying churches.

Sure, churches have tried every which way they can to attract people to come in their doors, but that’s a losing game.  The churches with the most shiny objects (the best light show, best musicians, nicest facilities, etc.) attract the most people—but what for?  I’m convinced that churches that dare to “rip the roofs off” will find willing people in their communities who want to find lives of meaning and purpose, people who are looking for more than just another shiny object.  After all, our culture has no lack of shiny objects for us to get distracted by.  There is no shortage of people outside of this church and every church who long for something real to show them there really is a different life possible.   Those people will only come to a church when that church really cares more for the people around it than they do for their own membership rolls, annual budgets and buildings.  When a church chooses to really love the people around it, God will provide the resources to make that love take concrete form.

Boyle writes, “God can get tiny, if we're not careful.”  By that, he means that our ideas of scarcity, our belief that the problems in our communities are too big to change, and our deep down suspicion that we have nothing to offer to others result in us believing in a God who can’t and won’t really change anything.  If we dare to believe God is really bigger than we can comprehend, can do more to transform the world that we can imagine and can change our individual lives as well as the lives of others, then God really will provide what a church needs to do the ministry God wants done.

In the Gospel story, people break in to find healing from Jesus, but in today’s world, I believe it is churches who must break out and rip their own “roofs” off to get outside to where Jesus is already at work.  It’s almost like Jesus got tired of waiting inside church buildings and went ahead of us out into our communities.  Now he waits for us to catch up to what he is already doing outside our church walls. 

Grace and Peace,

Chase        

What is Juneteenth?

I was in my late thirties before I recall hearing the word “Juneteenth.”  I was serving a church in St. Joseph, MO and the African American community in that small city had a Juneteenth celebration each June 19.  I recall asking, “What is Juneteenth?” and when I heard the answer wondering why I had never heard of the holiday before?

“Juneteenth” is a shortened form of “June 19”, which was the date in 1865 when the Emancipation Proclamation was finally declared in the last Confederate state to hear it.  When Union troops landed in Galveston, TX on June 19, 1865, the Union general made a public proclamation that all enslaved people were free.  Many slaveholders in Confederate states took their slaves to Texas for fear of the slaves being freed by Union troops.  By the original Juneteenth, an estimated 250,000 enslaved African Americans were in Texas.  The celebration that ensued in Galveston after the general’s words inspired future celebrations.

Part of honoring Juneteenth is the recognition that Lincoln declared slaves in Confederate states free as of January 1, 1865, but it took almost two and a half years for that to become known in all the Confederate states.  Justice, when it comes to race, is always delayed.  Indeed, Lincoln’s proclamation only applied to slaves in Confederate states, and it wasn’t until the Thirteenth Amendment was passed on December 6, 1865 that slaves in Union states were officially freed.  The emancipation of slaves in Texas wasn’t settled law until Texas Supreme Court decisions in 1874.  Historians and activists today note that real freedom for African Americans has been hard won only in steps through Jim Crow up until the present moment. 

I never learned about Juneteenth in any of my formal education.  I also didn’t learn about redlining and racial housing segregation in Kansas City and every other American city.  I learned about Martin Luther King, Jr. but I didn’t know the history of lynchings across the country including Kansas City.  I learned George Washington’s teeth were made of wood, but I only recently discovered some of them were human teeth that came from his slaves.  I learned about our Founding Fathers, but I didn’t learn that many of them were slaveholders who believed in brutal violence against their human property.  Why did it take so long for me to learn such things? 

I believe most white people of my generation and older are having to re-learn American history or maybe un-learn the way it was taught to us.  The advances in technology and the small steps towards racial equality have meant more voices are being heard than ever before.  I grew up in predominantly white spaces where educators knowingly or unknowingly taught me things like the Civil War was about states’ rights rather than slavery.  I visited southern plantations where tour guides refused to talk about the brutal lives of enslaved people.  In sum, I learned a “whitewashed” history that failed to reckon with centuries of slavery and state sponsored racism.  My learning curve has been pretty steep.

White folks have a choice to make, we can view our new understandings about America’s history as an attack upon our identities, getting defensive and viewing ourselves as victims or we can respond with humility, listening, learning and allowing ourselves to take in painful but ultimately redemptive new ideas. 

I grew up with a white Jesus too.  My children’s Bible had a Jesus who looked Norwegian!  As I grew up and came to understand Jesus was a brown Semitic man who didn’t look like me, I still didn’t understand the significance of a whitewashed Jesus.  It wasn’t until I ended up with two black sons and I read to them from a children’s Bible each night at bedtime, that I fully understood how important it was for my brown boys to see pictures where Jesus was brown too.  How we tell the stories of our past matters in ways and at a level white folks like me grew up not having to understand, but if we truly wish to love our neighbors as ourselves, we have to re-learn/un-learn history (including our religious history) as we have known it.

An essential part of learning is admitting what one doesn’t know.  I admit I have a lot to learn about the history of racism in America.  An essential part of being a Christian is learning the stories of other people, I also admit I have a lot to learn about the history of suffering by African Americans.

If you would like to learn more about Juneteenth and participate with African Americans envisioning a new world, there are plenty of opportunities to do so.  One good option happens on June 27 noon-1:30 pm.  The Greater Kansas City Disciples will offer a Juneteenth commemoration via Zoom.  It will include presentations on KC history and a Q&A time.  kcdisciples.org

Grace and Peace,
Chase

Collapsing Into Sabbath

“Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.”

--Exodus 20:8 NRSV

I remember life before I had seasonal allergies.  Whatever was blooming had no effect on me; that all changed in my late thirties.  Now I get them bad, and although Zyrtec is my daily drug of choice, there are some days when I try every over the counter option out there only to get no relief.  True confession: prior to suffering allergies myself, I secretly thought people with allergies were making it up and being dramatic; I had no idea how bad it can be. 

I recently had the kind of bad allergy day that strikes me only once or twice a year.  I was sleepy in the middle of the afternoon and took a nap.  When I woke, the pressure in my sinuses was immense—I literally felt like somebody was pumping air into the empty spaces in my skull!  I shambled downstairs to have dinner with the family, but my wife took one look at me and said, “Go back to bed.  You look miserable.”  I skipped dinner and remained in bed until the following morning.  I think I literally needed to remain asleep until the air cleared. 

This never used to happen to me.  It seems bizarre that I would need to just collapse in such a manner.  This kind of breakdown makes me want to look up at the sky and scream, “What the heck?”  (Except replace the word “heck” with the expletive of your choice.)

I’m a minister, so I’m always looking to find some spiritual meaning out of my experiences, even if those meanings are sometimes forced.  So my collapse due to allergies has got me thinking about the idea of rest.  Sometimes our minds and our hearts are so full, we need to just collapse into rest.  When the pressure gets too great, the best thing we can do is stop, because the very air we are breathing is filled with stuff triggering a reaction inside of us that necessitates halting our activity immediately.

I preach, teach and write about cultivating a spiritual life, but I have to cop to being pretty bad at it myself.  I’m addicted to activity.  I feel a sense of guilt or shame when I stop and rest.  Part of the secret thrill of resting for me is a sense that I am getting away with something.  I should be doing “something worthwhile,” I think when I’m taking a nap, binging a TV show or reading a book just for pleasure.  Somehow, doing any of these things for its own sake seems selfish or at least misguided.  There is always a “to do list” sapping the joy out of pleasurable things.  It's a masochistic cycle.

In his book Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest,Wayne Muller writes, “Our culture invariably supposes that action and accomplishment are better than rest, that doing something—anything—is better than doing nothing.  Because of our desire to succeed, to meet these ever-growing expectations, we do not rest.  Because we do not rest, we lose our way.”

In the Torah, the first five books of what Christians misname The Old Testament, God commands keeping sabbath, a practice of connecting with the very order of creation which was created in six days with a seventh day of rest woven into it.  The sabbath is a day where everything rests—even the hired hands, slaves, animals and land itself rest on the Sabbath.  Everything needs rest, a time to worship God and a time to reflect upon what really matters amidst all the activity of our lives. 

I’ve heard of people who practice sabbath on days other than Saturday or Sunday.  I’ve heard of others that make keeping sabbath a part of their daily routines of prayer and meditation.  I’ve even known a few who practiced sabbath in moments of breathing, prayer and meditation which have become an integral part of every moment as they go about their daily work. 

My own efforts of keeping sabbath look more like a hit and miss, start and stop, and sort of an awkward catch as catch can sort of thing.  I’m pretty sure that’s why I end up collapsing sometimes, as if my spiritual self has collected too many allergens along the way and I’m left overloaded and spent.  I feel sure there is a better way, and daily doses of sabbath would help in this regard.  As I age, perhaps like allergies, things will get severe enough that I’ll be forced to change my ways.  I’ve usually found that I’m thick headed enough that I only do what’s good for me after things have gotten bad enough to force me to change.

Joan Boarysenko shares a story about a woodcutter to describe her own tendency towards fruitless activity, “He had an axe that was dull; the blade needed to be sharpened. A stranger came up to him and said, ‘You know, if you just stop working and take time to sharpen that blade, everything would go so much more smoothly.’  And the woodcutter was frantic. He said, ‘Forget it. I don't have time to stop and sharpen my blade. I've got things to do. I've got a family to support.’ And he just kept on keeping on .... Sometimes when I'm sitting at my computer, I remember the story of that woodcutter. And I say to myself, ‘Joan, you might be busy, but if you take five minutes, and you just get up and you do some stretches ... or you take 10 minutes and go out and take a walk ... or if you just take two minutes and close your eyes and do some breathing — you'll come into your center, your blade will be sharp, and the rest of your work will just flow ...’”

Man, I think that woodcutter and I were separated at birth.

Whether you are the kind of person who is proactive and disciplined, managing to care for yourself daily in order to connect with the Divine or you are like me and must be dragged into God’s presence by the painful circumstances of life, I wish you less collapsing and more flowing with the very essence of creation that will nurture your soul and make all your activity purposeful.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

We are All Leftovers

We are All Leftovers 
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.--Romans 8:38-39 NRSV

During these days of pandemic quarantine, I have indulged in binging some TV series that have been on my list for a long time.  Recently, I got around to watching the HBO series The Leftovers.  It is about what happens in a world where 2% of the world’s population simply disappears one day.  Poof!  Suddenly, 140 million people are gone, people from every nation, ethnic group, gender, religion, sexuality, age—all simply gone.  Those who have disappeared are called “the Departed.”  The show takes pains to show this is not some kind of Rapture where the good people are taken off to heaven, because the Departed were a mix of good and bad people.  There is no explanation, no pattern, no sense to the world changing event.  It happened and now the world must deal with that reality.

The Leftovers was recommended to me by multiple people, because of the shows overt religious subject and the many different ways characters both do and don’t look to religion to make sense of their losses.  One of the main characters is a minister; he’s deeply flawed but at least he is not a pedophile or exorcist, which are the usual ways clergy show up in popular culture.  Yet, I resisted watching the show, because one of its creators is Damon Lindelof.  Lindelof also was a creator of the TV show Lost, which I watched well, religiously, and was sorely disappointed when the many mysteries the show set up were never answered in satisfactory ways.  I didn’t want to be frustrated and disappointed again.

I became more open to Lindelof’s Leftovers when I read his statement early declaring the show would never provide an answer to its central mystery: what happened to the missing people?  Lindelof said the show isn’t about answers but about how people deal with not having answers to their deepest pain.  Huh?  That sounds like a pretty depressing show, but I am interested, or at least interested enough to watch the show six years after it first came out.

Indeed, Lindelof was true to his word; The Leftovers offers no definitive answers for why 140 million people simply vanished one day.  Instead, the show is about how people deal with a grief that has no closure.  Some double down on the religion they have, others reject their former religions.  Some create new religions, and there are new mysteries and seemingly supernatural events that end up raising more questions than they do answers.  Some get lost in their work, others quit their jobs.  Some families grow closer, others fall apart.  Some self-medicate with drugs and alcohol, others seek to drop all their vices.  Conspiracy theories are everywhere.  In sum, it seems a lot like real life when unexpected and/or unexplained tragedy strikes.

Whether it is 9-11 or a death in a car accident, a lost job or a divorce, our losses set us adrift searching to make sense of what is nonsensical.  Like someone trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the box of the finished work and without all the pieces, we struggle to find a reason for our pain.  It’s no wonder people cling to shallow and dangerous theology like, “everything happens for a reason” or “God just needed another angel in heaven” or “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”  Even bad theology is better than a world where nothing makes sense.  A conspiracy theory, no matter how crazy, is preferable to a world where chaos can strike at any time.  

I’ve seen that people who work through their grief do so by creating meaning in their lives in the way one might use a nail file to sculpt a mountain.  It happens slowly, with all sorts of stops and starts.  It only happens with honesty, but even the most honest must deceive themselves sometimes, because the pain can be too much.  

I have learned in my own life and seen it also in my role as minister that more than answers, even though answers are important, people really want to know they have not been rejected and abandoned, by family, by friends and by God.  Even when they (and I) push people away, inside we are begging for someone to stay beside us and help us bear our pain when it is too much for us to bear alone.  Cards, letters, texts, emails, calls, visits, sitting down over coffee or a drink, talking, listening, crying, all matter more than explanations, because oftentimes there is no explanation good enough.

At one time or another, all of us are “leftovers,” left behind as the world keeps spinning while we are stuck in our moments of pain.  When that happens and I’m called to show up in my capacity as minister, if I mention God at all, I read the few verses in Romans 8 that declare nothing can separate us from the love of God.  In the end, more than answers, that’s all I want to know.  If God can’t show up in person, I will settle for a good friend, many times, I expect, that is how God shows up anyway.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

“Is there nothing you found worth fighting for?”

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

--Matthew 10:34 NRSV

“There are churches who want to avoid conversation about race, money, politics, gender roles AND want more young people to join them. People under age 40 will write them off as irrelevant and afraid right quick. Just sayin.”

I read the above tweet from Mark Tidsworth, a Baptist minister and church consultant, and I stopped dead in my scrolling on my iPhone.  He expressed something I knew in my gut but had not articulated—church growth is intertwined with social justice.  A big part of the reason churches cannot attract younger people is because churches have shied away from addressing the tough issues facing our culture.  If churches do so at all, it comes from the Religious Right which preaches a Gospel of exclusion and justifies an unjust status quo.  Most churches are conspicuously quiet about the issues many young people care the most about.

Younger generations who have grown up having the injustices of racism, sexism, homophobia, economic inequality and more thrust in their faces via their smart phones look at churches and see them at best as irrelevant and at worst part of the problem.    

There are good reasons why churches have avoided talking about tough issues facing our society.  The Religious Right’s hyper partisanship demonstrates the danger of confusing Christianity with worship of Caesar.  Also, discussions of social justice often devolve into deadlocked arguments where people retreat to their preexisting partisan positions.  (MSNBC viewers on this side and Fox viewers on the other side.)  Certainly, we need spaces where we can set aside the polarization of our culture and share our common humanity and need for God.

Yet, there are bad reasons for avoiding tough topics in churches.  Churches often ignore the difficult issues facing society out of a misguided attempt to avoid conflict.  Yet, even a cursory reading of the New Testament reveals that everywhere believers went conflict followed them.  The “peace that passes understanding” does not mean the absence of conflict.  Churches also avoid dealing with issues of social justice out of a desire to be “nice” lest anyone feel uncomfortable, yet the Jesus of the Gospels doesn’t seem to care at all about people’s comfort and he certainly isn’t concerned with being considered “nice.”  He knew he was asking his followers to accept lives of discomfort, being misunderstood and condemned.  That’s why he spoke about them facing persecution from authorities, neighbors and even their own families.  When Jesus says the difficult words, “I have not to bring peace but a sword” and “I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother” he was talking about believers having to risk even their most important relationships on behalf of a radical love for every person.  Many American churches seem more concerned about what the neighbors think of them than what God thinks of them.

A refusal to touch on political topics flies in the face of the Gospel.  Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, teachings and miracles are all political.  To proclaim the Kingdom of God in a land occupied by Rome was to denounce the divinity and rule of Caesar.  To speak of God incarnate in “the least of these” is to speak not of private charity but a world-changing ethic.  To ignore the political dimensions of the Gospel is to remake the Gospel into a sentimentalized individual religion that costs the believer nothing. 

Sometimes Christians care more about their political party than they care about the Gospel’s demands for justice.  One can be political for the sake of the Gospel without falling into the trap of being partisan.  All political parties would gladly claim your soul, but Christians are called to wade into the difficult waters of politics with their allegiance firmly given to Christ and his love for all people which must always be put above the demands of party, family or interest group.  A good way to judge whether you’re following the Gospel or your own political preference is to ask how does a particular platform, policy or law affect people with the least political power?  If you are wondering “what would Jesus do?”, a good rule of thumb is to side with people whom society considers “the least of these.”  According to Jesus, that is where you will find him.

UnitedChurch of Christ minister Tony Robinson shares a story originally told by the South African anti-apartheid activist Rev. Dr. Allan Boesak:

Two men appeared at heaven's gate and were ushered into St. Peter's presence.  One of the men looked just terrific. Tan, fit, a nice head of hair, clean nails, great suit and shoes. Except for the fact that he was dead he could have been in GQ. He smiled confidently at Peter.  The other man limped into St. Peter's presence. He had a welt on the back of his head. His clothes looked worn (and not because he had purchased the "distressed" model). His teeth were imperfect and there was dirt beneath his nails. The look on his face suggested he thought he was in the wrong place.
St. Peter assayed the two people before him. He then turned to the first and asked, "Where are your wounds? Was there nothing down there worth fighting for?"

So many churches have died, are dying and will die without having any wounds to show for their existence.  Along with St. Peter, younger generations are asking, “Is there nothing you found worth fighting for?”

Thanks to technology and social media which put the video, images and accounts of people facing injustice everywhere in our world right in the palm of our hand, we can no longer hide from the pain of our fellow humans.  The days of retreating to a nice suburb where one could avoid the social struggles of our culture are over.  We can no longer claim we didn’t know people faced oppression and abuse because of their skin color, gender, sexual orientation or economic class.  Their stories find us in the places we created to escape from them. 

One of the last places remaining where one can stick one’s head in the sand is in American churches, but that won’t last much longer.  Younger generations see the church as either irrelevant to their efforts to improve the world or as part of the problem that needs to be changed.  If a church wishes to survive or better yet thrive as it lives out the Gospel of Jesus Christ it must do the difficult work of finding ways to discuss and address the injustices of our day without succumbing to the false idols of partisan politics.  Our partisanship must be with Jesus who sided with the poor, the outcast, the condemned and the broken-hearted.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

Are You Listening?

“Let anyone with ears listen!”

--Matthew 11:15 NRSV

The great 20^th century theologian Paul Tillich wrote, “The first duty of love is to listen.”  I don’t know about you, but listening is pretty difficult for me.  “Chase, are you listening to me?” is a common refrain in my house that usually is said by my wife when my nose is buried in my phone.  When I talk with others, especially people I disagree with, often I’m not listening to their words at all but merely thinking of what I will say next.  Listening, really listening is valued less and less in a culture that allows all of us to post our thoughts at all times.

The last few weeks of protest following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer has heightened the awareness among white people of the suffering of black people.  The effects of hundreds of years of systemic oppression are very much a part of our present however much we wish to believe they are in our collective rearview mirror.  Yet, this week the media is beginning to turn away and while protests persist their furor has died down.  I would offer, however, that white folks, myself included, who really wish for our culture to improve must remain in listening mode.

Now that we white people don’t have the pain of systemic racism thrust in our faces in the same way as we did during the last two weeks, we can’t simply go back to our safe white spaces where we don’t have to think about it anymore.  We must keep listening.  If we stop listening to what the African American community is saying, we will just be in this same place again.  Who else must die and what else must burn to get our attention once more?

The spiritual writer Douglas Steere wrote, “Someone once suggested to me that in every conversation between two people there are always at least six persons present. What each person said are two; what each person meant to say are two more; and what each person understood the other to say are two more.”  He illustrates the essential barriers to communication between any two people.  This is especially true when it comes to black people and white people talking about racism.  Plenty of times I have reacted to the pain voiced by a black person with my own disbelief or defensiveness.  I heard only an attack, when what was really being expressed was pain, fear, and anger.  Those emotions might have been directed at me, but they weren’t about me.  I have had to learn (and I still struggle to accept) that like most things, when I talk with a black person about race, I need to switch my focus from me to them.  I have to actually listen.

Morton Kelsey, who has written a lot on prayer, says, “Real listening is a kind of prayer, for as we listen, we penetrate through the human ego and hear the Spirit of God, which dwells in the heart of everyone. Real listening is a religious experience. Often, when I have listened deeply to another, I have the same sense of awe as when I have entered into a holy place and communed with the heart of being itself.”  When I have been able, with God’s help, to remove my ego from center stage and to actually listen to the pain our culture’s racism inflicts on black people, I have discovered the voice of God speaking.  Defensiveness, denial, disbelief each drown out the voice of God when white folks say they are listening to African American people.  How do I know?  Because I am guilty of  telling black people I have listened to them when I have merely been protecting my own misguided attempts of respectability. 

We can do better.  We must do better.  We have to keep listening.

What is God saying to you through black people in our culture these last few weeks?  

Have you been able to stop and listen?  

Don’t turn away.  

Don’t change the channel.  

Keep listening.  

God has more to say to you.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

How is Your Bandwidth?

Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.

--Romans 12:2 CEB

We recently upgraded our internet service at home.  Like many folks, I suspect, when all four members of our family were forced by COVID-19 to stay home all day and all four of us were using the internet at the same time, we discovered to our dismay our phones, computers, video games and video streaming slowed to a crawl.  In a fit of frustration one day, I contacted my internet provider to see what could be done.  A nice customer service representative informed me I was eligible to upgrade to their fastest internet speed and get a brand new modem for free.  The best part was it would cost me $20 less a month than what I had been paying for slower internet speed!  I wish I had made that call sooner, because now we are all zooming down the information superhighway.

I am not an IT expert, but I am told the speed of your internet comes down to bandwidth.  One definition of bandwidth is “the transmission capacity for a computer network.”  Your equipment connecting you to the internet, the number of devices trying to use the internet through that equipment and the kinds of things you are doing on the internet, such as downloading video games, streaming movies, etc. all determine how much bandwidth or capacity you have to work with.

Bandwidth sounds like an apt spiritual metaphor to me.  Another definition of bandwidth is “the energy or mental capacity required to deal with a situation.”  I don’t know about you, but recent news events have left me feeling low in this kind of bandwidth.  COVID-19 and all the complexities that come from it, the killing of George Floyd and other African Americans by police officers and white vigilantes, the protests and counter-protests after those killings, on top of all the usual stuff that comes with trying to cope with life has left me feeling exhausted at times.. 

I’m in the business of trying to help people recharge their spiritual bandwidth.  I am well aware that people are less able to care for others when they have failed to take care of themselves in a spiritual way.  I also know that if there is any hope of people changing the many messes humanity has made in our world it lies with people whose spiritual bandwidth is at high capacity and who are connected to the Divine.  I know all this, but I still resist doing the things necessary for spiritual self-care.  You’d think by 48 years old I would have learned that doing more and more activity, no matter how well-intentioned it may be, depletes spiritual energy inside me, and unless I remain connected with God to keep that bandwidth going, I will run out.

The consequences for us running low on spiritual bandwidth are not limited to our own frame of mind, mood or energy.  When our capacity for facing situations from a healthy spiritual place runs out, we often treat those we love the most worse, have nothing to offer the world in terms of making it better and engage in behaviors that hurt ourselves.  I’m pretty sure most of us get that concept, just as I’m pretty sure most of us have trouble putting it into practice.

In the apostle Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome, he offers some advice.  He tells them not to be conformed to the “patterns of this world” but be transformed “by the renewing of your mind.”  Growing up in conservative Christian circles, I usually heard this verse expressed in dualistic terms: world = sin, evil, bad vs. Christian life = righteousness, good.  At this point in my journey, however, I’m understanding the “patterns of the world” not as something inherently bad.  I believe most people are trying to do good things out of as pure motives as they can muster, but doing the stuff we aspire to do becomes more difficult, more confusing and less effective without spiritual bandwidth.

Paul goes on to say that when we are renewed and are focused on what God wants, we can
accomplish stuff like this:

Love should be shown without pretending. Hate evil, and hold on to what is good. Love each other like the members of your family. Be the best at showing honor to each other. Don’t hesitate to be enthusiastic—be on fire in the Spirit as you serve the Lord! Be happy in your hope, stand your ground when you’re in trouble, and devote yourselves to prayer. Contribute to the needs of God’s people, and welcome strangers into your home. Bless people who harass you—bless and don’t curse them. Be happy with those who are happy, and cry with those who are crying. Consider everyone as equal, and don’t think that you’re better than anyone else. Instead, associate with people who have no status. Don’t think that you’re so smart. Don’t pay back anyone for their evil actions with evil actions, but show respect for what everyone else believes is good.  If possible, to the best of your ability, live at peace with all people.

On my best days, doing this kind of good stuff doesn’t come easily; on days when my bandwidth is low, this kind of living barely happens at all.

I don’t know what you do to renew yourself and connect with God, but you need to do it not just for yourself but for our broken world.  Our world needs people who have the bandwidth to show love to strangers, associate with the lowly, act humbly, demonstrate perseverance and live in hope.  Maybe the best thing you can do for the world today is do the stuff that renews your mind and spirit: prayer, meditation, scripture reading, journaling, yoga, exercise, gardening, being outdoors, whatever!

Get some more bandwidth.  You need it and so do I.

Grace and Peace,

Chase