There is No Quick-Fix for Your Spiritual Life

And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 
--Matthew 4:19 NRSV

I’ve had two encounters with healthcare recently that seem like an apt metaphor for the spiritual life. The first has been the medical marvel of the COVID vaccination—two shots and that’s it! The second is my health coach, a part of my new health insurance plan, who provides accountability for me in order to eat better and exercise more. I so badly wish there was a vaccination to help me lose weight, lower my cholesterol and improve my cardiovascular system. Unfortunately, no quick fix exists for this stuff, only a lifestyle change will do. I’d much rather have the quick fix.

 

When I was a pastor in St. Joseph, MO, I served a mainline Protestant (Disciples of Christ) church whose glory days of crowds and big budgets took place 50-70 years earlier. The booming churches were of the non-denominational megachurch variety. I will admit to “church envy” over their numbers which gave the impression of vitality, but over the course of my time there I discovered those numbers were deceptive. About every year or so, a different one of those non-denominational churches became the “hot” church and a crowd would vacate what quickly became the “previously hot” church for it. A new pastor, a better band, an improved A/V spectacle or a shiny new convenience like a barista in the lobby would draw the not-so-faithful. The “hot” church was not much different than the “hot” new restaurant in town; it drew a crowd until it ceased to be hot or new anymore. St. Joseph was small enough to see this shifting of church memberships. In a larger metropolitan area like Kansas City (where I am now), however, this kind of church-hopping remains hidden.

 

When everything in our society is consumer-oriented, people can’t be blamed from viewing their church or even their religion as consumers. We are a society that loves a quick fix in everything from our stock market returns to our weight loss plans. In a society where everything competes to be the best and the newest our attention spans are short. If something doesn’t work, ten more new products are available that promise to do the same thing only better. A church and even Christianity itself is none of these things. It is a lifestyle change not a vaccination.

 

I grew up viewing the Christian life as a sort of spiritual vaccination: say the right prayer, feel the right feelings and poof, I was a Christian. The type of worship I experienced and the Christianity I was taught was about chasing that initial feeling of vaccination when one gave their life to Christ. I should have known from the language that implored you “to give your life to Christ” that “life” wasn’t a one-time thing but a life-long journey.

 

Jesus called his disciples to follow him on a journey that lasted their entire lives and asked them to change everything. He didn’t offer a vaccination, a quick fix or a new gizmo to make one’s life easier. I’ve spent my life in the church, yet I still struggle to let go of the concept that my relationship with God is compatible with something I earn or buy. Instead, following Jesus seems more akin to a recovery group for addicts—only the addiction isn’t to drugs or alcohol but self-centered consumerism. Or perhaps following Jesus is closer to undergoing deprogramming from a cult only the cult isn’t a would-be messiah living on a compound somewhere but our cultural values that prize convenience, indulgence and instant stimulation above everything else.

 

Jesus calls us to a lifestyle change, a complete overhaul that we are never done working on. A Jesus-centered church and a Jesus-centered Christianity is not centered on a minister who operates a cult of personality, a congregation offering to stimulate your appetite for entertainment or a set of beliefs that make you feel like you passed a semester course on God. Instead, the lifestyle involves a commitment to community, relationships of integrity, and spiritual practices which help us to find our security in God alone.

 

The things that matter in life are not things you buy or one-time experiences but rather life-long commitments to relationships with family, friends and most of all, God. There is no single or even double-dose vaccination for them.

 

Grace and Peace,

Rev. Chase Peeples

NIMBY and Jesus

Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward
God.
--Luke 12: 18-21 NRSV

This week I’ve been watching a TV series on Amazon Video called Loudermilk. It centers on a recovering alcoholic who leads a support group for alcoholics and addicts. Fair warning--it’s a comedy with plenty of crude humor, curse words and sexual situations—so skip it if such stuff offends you. It also has some great writing, great acting and some powerful wisdom. Clearly some of the creators and writers are in recovery, because usually each episode contains a nugget of hard-won truth.

In the show, the sobriety group meets at a Catholic church in a well-to-do Seattle neighborhood. After meetings, group members stand around outside to talk, smoke and often, since this is a comedy, act like fools—loud ones. Neighbors who think of themselves as enlightened progressives have bought into the gentrified neighborhood and complain about the group, especially its noise and left behind cigarette butts. It’s a classic case of NIMBY-ism, as in “Not In My Backyard” or “Poor people and troubled people deserve places to be, just not anywhere near me.” When I watched the episode, my jaw dropped, because I have dealt with just this situation.

I worked at a church in an expensive neighborhood in Kansas City. The church had no parking lot, only on-street parking. Several AA groups met in the building, and as is the case with every AA group I’ve ever known, members would stand outside after the meetings to talk usually with cigarettes in hand. Because we are talking about alcoholics and addicts here, some of the groups’ members were loud and had little awareness of the world around them. That’s why we had conflict with one of the church’s neighbors.

He was a lawyer who lived across from the church’s main entrance. He didn’t like the kind of people who went to the AA meetings being so near his house and “his children.” He complained about the language they used and that “they left trash and cigarette butts on his lawn.” We passed his complaints on to the AA groups, but he was never satisfied. Finally, one day he stormed over to the church, chewed out an sainted older lady who was a church member and threatened to sue.

He was pretty hostile during our phone call. I explained that these meetings were literally saving people’s lives, but he didn’t care. He wanted them to hold their meetings elsewhere. He repeatedly threatened to sue until I finally offered to personally pick up any cigarette butt he found in his yard. Every day I was at the church building from then on, I walked the curb in front of his house to look for cigarette butts or other trash. I found one cigarette butt a week--maybe. I found more than that in my own yard and neither I nor my neighbors smoke. We don’t have any AA groups meeting nearby either. The litigious neighbor often saw me checking his lawn for cigarette butts but never spoke to me again about it.

In America, the suburban home is largely considered a symbol of safety and success. I should know. My family and I live in a nice neighborhood that we chose for its good schools and safety. Yet, I’ve come to understand my suburban home comes at a cost. I am removed from most of the needs and struggles of people who are unable to live where I do. My little pocket of perceived safety comes with a false sense of the world—a world where most people live with issues I don’t have to see every day. I’m sure the people in my neighborhood have all sorts of pain and struggle, but you’d never know it. I have purchased a form of blindness that lulls me into believing I have no responsibility to others in the community. Also, in the pursuit of my self-interest and my home value, I am tempted to keep the world outside of my blinders at bay by any means necessary.

As much as I’d like to think I’m better than the angry neighbor ranting about cigarette butts and threatening lawsuits, if I’m honest, I’m not as far from him as I would like.

I don’t often read Christianity Today because in general its theological outlook and resulting politics don’t appeal to me, but I came across this article about Christians and NIMBY-ism that strikes me as truly prophetic for us suburban Americans. In it, the columnist Bonnie Christian writes:

Home is a good gift from God, yet our homes become our idols if we make them the source of security we ought to find in Christ.

Ouch!

She goes on to quote St. Cyprian, a Christian bishop in North Africa in the third century and what he has to say strikes me as amazingly modern:

who, excluding the poor from their neighborhood, stretch out their fields far and wide into space without any limits … even in the midst of their riches those are torn to pieces by the anxiety of vague thought, lest the robber should spoil, lest the murderer should attack, lest the envy of some wealthier neighbor should become hostile, and harass them with malicious lawsuits. Such a one enjoys no security either in his food or in his sleep.

Kristian continues:

The security we seek in a Suburban Lifestyle Dream is a lie, Cyprian said, because searching for security outside of God leaves us with emptiness, fear, and vulnerability instead. Enjoying a large yard or a single-family house isn’t sinful. But making any home—suburban or not—the foundation of our identity or a fortress to be guarded against the “intrusion” of the poor into our communities most certainly is.

It isn’t just homeowners who suffer from NIMBY-ism. Suburban churches can suffer from it too. Our buildings and the respectability we desire for them can become our idols. In the same way homeowners can look to security in their homes rather than in God, church people can make the same mistake.

Jesus told the “Parable of the Rich Fool” to warn Christians that it is easy to place our security and trust in all the wrong things. No suburban home even in the most gated and guarded neighborhoods can guarantee us a life free of crisis, danger and pain, but such enclaves sure can  numb our spirts and harden our hearts towards exactly the kind of people Jesus calls us to minister to and care for. One of the greatest challenges for American Christianity is understanding the suburban lifestyle is not the same thing as following Jesus.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

Where Can I Get Some Mandalorian Armor?

Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. --Ephesians 6:12-13 NRSV

My family and I have been watching the Star Wars TV show The Mandalorian on Disney+. If you are not into Star Wars (and if not, why not?), The Mandalorian looks and feels a lot like an old western only with spaceships and laser blasters instead of horses and six shooters. The main character is from the planet Mandalore--hence the name of the show--where a race of fierce warriors once lived. These warriors were known by their impenetrable armor made of one of the toughest metals in the galaxy. Our hero--similar to “the man with no name” in westerns--travels the galaxy encased in his armor battling evil and saving the local populace from the bad guys. (Oh yeah, there’s a "baby Yoda" too, but if you’re not into Star Wars, then that probably won’t mean much to you.)

I’ve often wished for a kind of armor that could protect me from nasty remarks, manipulation, betrayal and pain. Maybe you know what I’m talking about. The myth of the invulnerable hero permeates our culture from old westerns to John McClane of Die Hard, from Lara Croft of Tomb Raider to Daenerys Targaryen of Game of Thrones. Who doesn’t want to live as if all the hurtful stuff that comes at us in all of our relationships doesn’t really scratch our surfaces? So, we learn survival skills such as wearing “masks” which enable us to present an image to the outside world different from our inner reality; pushing intimacy away so we don’t have the risk of being hurt; putting others down before we can be on the receiving end of a put down and more. 

There’s another kind of armor in the TV show The Mandalorian: the armor worn by the stormtroopers of the evil Galactic Empire. The bad guys’ armor is comically ineffective. All it takes is one smack from even the unlikeliest of sources to knock a stormtrooper out of action. An attentive viewer of the Star Wars franchise might wonder why they even bother wearing it, since it doesn’t really protect them at all. Our emotional defenses are a lot like the stormtroopers’ armor--it may make us feel safe but ultimately it just a bunch of heavy useless junk to carry around.

For the real armor--the kind the title character of The Mandalorian wears--we have to look to a deeper source of protection. The Apostle Paul called it “the whole armor of God.” It’s too bad that so many Christians down through the centuries have taken these verses literally and as an excuse to become crusaders shedding blood in God’s name. Paul actually subverts the idea of armor and says our protection comes not from violence or the threat of it, not from literal weapons, helmets and breastplates, but from God. The armor that really keeps us safe is made up of things like truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation and Spirit. 

God did not create us to be action heroes wandering the Wild West or the galaxy immune from harm. No, God created us to be in relationship with one another and to take the risks which come with being vulnerable with one another. Of course that means we will be hurt but we can bear those pains because our strength and assurance comes from our perfect God rather than a misguided belief that others will be perfect or an even worse belief that we have to be perfect. God designed us to love courageously, show mercy recklessly and give generously with the full knowledge that living this way invites betrayal, ridicule and pain, but our identity and security is found in the God who created us rather than in the actions of others. 

Pick your armor carefully. One kind is useless but the other will sustain you through the difficulties of this life.

Grace and Peace, Chase

God Has a Tattoo With Your Name On It

But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me,
    my Lord has forgotten me.”
Can a woman forget her nursing child,
    or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
    yet I will not forget you.
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands;
    your walls are continually before me.
--Isaiah 49: 14-16 NRSV

On Sunday, I preached about the biblical basis for addressing God in feminine, especially motherly, terms. The scripture read on Sunday came from Isaiah 49, one of my favorite Bible passages, because of the way God compares God’s self to a mother being unable to forget the child she gave birth to. What especially speaks to me is the first line of verse 16: “See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.” It speaks to me because while my wife and I don’t have our sons’ names inscribed on our hands, we do have their names tattooed on our bodies.

When the adoptions were finalized for each of our sons making them legally our children, my wife Jennifer and I found a tattoo parlor and had their monograms tattooed on our bodies. My wife chose to have one son’s monogram tattooed on the top of each foot. Ouch! I chose to put their monograms on either side of my left wrist.

I wanted the tattoos of my sons’ monograms where I could easily see them wherever I chose. Back before my cell phone became my timepiece, I wore a watch which would cover the tattoos. These were the days before everyone had tattoos, and I felt like a little camouflage was in order, lest the sight of the minister having tattoos cause heart palpitations for the church’s more uptight members. Sometimes the watch wasn’t enough cover, and I did get to watch some prim and proper women (and men!) clutch their pearls in horror. Eventually I stopped wearing a watch, and everybody, even church-going grandmothers, got tattoos, so it’s not nearly the big deal it was once upon a time.

My sons don’t take much notice of the tattoos sported by their parents. After all, they’ve been around as long as my teenage sons can remember. Sometimes, however, I do make a big deal of pointing the tattoos out in order to tell each of them how much I love them and that I carry them around with me all the time. It’s true. I glance down at my tattoos on my wrist and think about all we’ve gone through together, from the struggles of adoption to the struggles of being a teenager.

A psychologist friend of mine says that Jen and I were responding to a need for “embodiment.” We didn’t literally go through the physical process of giving birth to our sons, she says, so we needed a physical tie to them. That makes sense to me, although at the time, we needed a way to ritualize our celebrations of the end of the rigorous adoption processes we faced with each boy. Either way, the tattoos were a way of claiming both beautiful children as our own.

In Isaiah 49:16, it is God who has the name of God’s people tattooed on God’s hands. God cannot forget you or me, but it is as if God goes to the extra trouble to inscribe our names on God’s hands just in case. God claims you and me, and I like to think God checks out the tattoos of each of our names to remember all God has been through with us so far on our journeys. God cherishes even the difficult times simply because God had the joy of being together with each one of us.

Whenever you feel alone, remember God has your name tattooed on God’s hands, and God is looking at it and lovingly thinking about you.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

My Mother Was Never Silent in Church

{W}omen should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. 
--1 Corinthians 14:33-34 NRSV

It’s been two and a half years since my mother died of a brain tumor. I still find myself grieving over her absence even as I discover new things about her for which I am grateful. As we approach Mother’s Day, I’ve been thinking about what she taught me about how a woman should act in church.

My mother never liked the role of preacher’s wife that the Southern Baptist churches my father served expected her to fill. She was an introvert and crowds of people left her depleted and irritated rather than the life of the party. She didn’t play the organ, lead the choir or act as a second unpaid minister with her husband. She did however faithfully teach children’s Sunday School and later adult Sunday School classes. All of her students, including me, learned an awful lot about the Bible and about God in her classes. My mother knew more about the Bible than most church members and even most  ministers. She bit her lip in many church situations because she didn’t want to cause trouble for my father, but there were just times she had to speak up no matter what anyone else thought, including her husband the minister.

My father told me the story of a time in the 1970’s during the rise of women’s rights and the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment when the St. Louis Baptist Association sent out a questionnaire to its pastors about the role of women. My father was fairly conservative in those days, so he answered all the questions according to the sexist biblical interpretations he had been taught—the husband has authority of his wife and she must submit to him, women should not hold positions of authority over men, only men could be church leaders and women could not be ordained. He made the mistake of leaving the questionnaire along with his answers out where my mother found it. The next morning my dad found the questionnaire with the words written on it in large bold letters: “THE ANSWERS WRITTEN ON THIS QUESTIONAIRE DO NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF EVERYONE IN THIS HOUSEHOLD—BARBARA PEEPLES.” My father said that was a turning point for him regarding the equality of women and he began questioning the teachings of his denomination about gender.

I recall another time that took place after my father had left the church I was raised in and gone to a new church across the country from it. My mother and I had not moved yet, and she continued to bring me to the original church so I could be with my friends in the youth group. The church had brought in an interim pastor who was a fire breathing fundamentalist. One Sunday, apropos of nothing, the preacher started yelling about abortion and declaring women who had one were going to hell. I was sitting with my friends in the back of the sanctuary, and I watched my mother abruptly and loudly stand up and gather her things in the middle of the sermon. She sat up front and when she turned to walk up the aisle every person in the church could see the anger written all over her face. It was a long aisle, and everyone got a good look at how mad she was.

She was waiting for me in the car after the service (I had stayed until its end). I asked my mom about why she left the service, and she replied that she wasn’t going to sit there and listen to some arrogant fool condemn women especially when he had no idea the heartbreaking choices women had to make while the men who got them pregnant didn’t bear any of those burdens. Her words, and even more so her actions, taught me that using religion to condemn hurting people was wrong.

Over the years since, I’ve heard all the prooftexts about women, usually a few scattered verses by the Apostle Paul. In defense of Paul, I’d simply note the poor man had no idea his mail would become holy scripture when he wrote his words. He was struggling to reconcile the freedom in Christ being experienced in the churches he founded with a culture intertwined with hierarchies of power. Sometimes he understood what equality in Christ meant (There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28 NRSV), and other times he was a man of his times and couldn’t see beyond the limits of his own culture (For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. Ephesians 5:23 NRSV). Because of my mother’s example, I learned that we need to read such culture-bound verses in light of the equality in Christ Paul was pointing toward instead of the patriarchal culture Paul was stuck in.

My mother never burned her bra on the church steps, but in her own way she pushed against sexism in the church and refused to be silenced. I’ve known so many brave and wise women who refused to be contained by misused Bible verses, and I laugh when I hear men quoting them, because I feel quite sure the women in their life are anything but submissive. Some of the courageous church women I have known have been pastors and seminary professors, deacons and elders, but whether they had a leadership role or were just like my mom, a female church member who refused to be silenced no matter the occasion, I am grateful to each of them.

Speaking of “Silence,” I encourage you to read the following poem by Margalea Warner and offer thanks for all the church women you’ve known who refused to be silent in church.

“As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the churches.” (I Corinthians 14:33-34)

I know a woman named Silence
She said her parents did not know her very well
when they named her.
They thought Silence was a beautiful name
for a girl.

She stands up in her pew and speaks her mind:
When a couple in church announces the birth of a girl
Silence says, “I think we should all clap for that.”

When a foreign student speaks about war in Ethiopia
Silence says, “Keep telling us about that, we need to hear.”

When someone complains about the church
needing air conditioning
Silence says, “That’s why I bring my fan.”

I love this woman named Silence
And I think we should definitely
Keep Silence in the church.

Grace and Peace,
Chase