Ordaination in the PCUSA a Great Interfaith Celebration

God is in all things.

God calls us across the lifespan through hundreds of thousands of movements and experinces, joys ans struggles, in the places and, most importantly, with the people that mark our lives.

There was a bagpiper and  Buddhists, a  Jesuit, a Moderator and Stated Clerk. Teaching and Ruling Elders from four Presbyteries. If you know me, you wouldn't be surprised.

The Table was set, Jesus invites us --to share bread and wine, to discern the graceful presence of the Risen Lord in times of consolation and desolation ("thank you" Ignatius Loyola), to hear the Spirit's voice in "Scotland the Brave" and in the ancient sacred chants of Sri Lankan Buddhism, nestled in between the notes of a most beautiful rendition of “Precious Lord,” in the faithful prayer of my friend and colleague, a former Mormon Bishop, who every day witnesses for grace and hope in the midst of old outdated structures, and, in the coming together of people of deep and traditional faith with those who seek and doubt and object…. All to celebrate what God has done, is doing and will continue to do among us all. As Ignatius said, “God is in ALL things.” With all thanksgiving and gratitude to God. Amen.

Seeing the Reflection of my Enemies that Lies Within

Our enemies tend to be some complex projection of our own aversions. “The last thing any of us want to hear is that we might have any responsibility for creating our own enemies. After all it wasn’t our car that drove over the newly sodded lawn.  And, we’re not the ones that spread malicious gossip about a loved one, nor are we the one who seemed to take great pleasure in stealing a colleague’s client.  But, we are ever to get rid of our enemies, or at least render them powerless over us, we will have to own up to our part in creating the enmity” (Robert Thurman, Love Your Enemies, p.16).

“Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.^* ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life? ’²⁶He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there? ’²⁷He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself. ’²⁸And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’

29 “But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour? ’³⁰Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. ³¹Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. ³²So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. ³⁴He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. ³⁵The next day he took out two denarii,^* gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend. ”³⁶Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? ’³⁷He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise’” (Luke, 10:25-37).

Dear Jesus, give me the courage to see, even dimly, the reflection the of my enemies that lies buried deeply within  myself. Grant me, then,, the grace to  be moved to deep pity for our shared plight; in your kind mercy, bandage and both of our wounds so that we may give our whole hearts and minds, souls and all our strength to loving you. Amen

In weakness we are strong

 

“The basic obstacle, however, to overcoming our anger towards our enemies is our thought that, unless we have the strength of anger, they will trample us. Anger, to this way of thinking is protective. It gives strength to resist. Without it we are weak.” (Robert Thurman, Love Your Enemies, p. 10).

“….but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” (St Paul, 2 Cor. 12:9).

Today, I pray the Holy Spirit to help me to become more and more awaere of how much I am caught up in the illusion that my anger is protective and makes me strong. I ask that Christ show me the grace of the strength of His weakness so that I increase in love. Amen.

Loving Your Enemy as Yourself

 

 

Lent starts tomorrow. A truly meaningful Lenten spiritual practice is often hard for me to settle into. The whole point is not to torture myself like I did the year at seminary when I gave up beef and, by holy week almost attacked the... check cashier at the local grocery simply because he was having a hamburger for lunch. The whole point,  is to engage in a daily practice that turns my heart and mind toward God even more closely, drawing me more deeply into the relationship. Not one that sends me over the counter, through the bulletproof glass to snatch a half-eaten burger.

This summer our denomination, (the PCUSA) will vote on changing our rules to allow clergy, at their discretion, to preform same sex marriages; this only the most visible of the many seismic shifts that we will be living into as a church and a society for the foreseeable future. Everyday, I go to work as a hospital chaplain. Healthcare is one of the places in our society where the sweeping changes that are effecting us all is being figured out, worked through and live out in real lives and real time, everyday.

All this change is stressful. Produces anxiety. And, anxiety and stress, as we all know from uncomfortable experience, comes out backward and sideways when we least expect it if we spend too much time and more energy than we really have trying to stuff them down, down, down, deep inside, pretending that we aren’t being effected.

This Lent, I want, to paraphrase what I think is a popular misquote of Gandhi, ask God’s help in trying to become some small part of the change… Jesus asked us to live lives that incarnate the unimaginable grace of the Resurrection, doing what seems to impossible, “love our enemies.” To do this, we must sacrifice the hubristic protections of our anger and fear, out cherished notions of what is right and good and just and, even  what is“Jesusy.”

For my Lenten Practice, I'll be reading, Love Your Enemies:How To Break the Anger Habit and Be a Whole Lot Happier, by Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman. Thurman, Columbia University's, Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies observes that Jesus’ work helping people draw closer to God spanned only three short years while Buddha’s teaching career spanned three decades. Over all those years, Buddha had time to figure out how to help the ever-resistant human mind and heart to align themselves and our living more closely with the impossibility of loving the enemy before us and within us.  

 

My prayer this Lent will be to prayerfully ask the Holy Spirit's help in loving my enemies as myself; even those I find coyly hidden deeply with myself.

Reminder from yesterday: People often think, “I’ve put that (traumatic event/loss) behind me.” Or, “I  saw a counselor (or talked with my pastor) about that at the time.” All the while they are wondering why certain present time events or encounters keep bother them or bring up the long ago pain or struggle. What folks don’t take  into consideration is that: they have changes, their lives have changed. The meanings they constructed in the past (on their own, with a pastor or therapist)  may no longer fit.

We often need to go back later and form new meaning from old, long past struggles. It is simply a part of our human condition. If you think about it, look how long the followers of Jesus have been trying to live into the meaning of his death and resurrection…

 

The reign of the Kingdom of God is most often most powerfully proclaimed by those who are least aware of it. Jesus knew that so when he, “sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.

Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on” (Mark 12:41-44).

And when I was sitting in my group room earlier today a widow told this story: “I used to frequent this little food pantry once a week. Somehow they had so much bread, much more than they could give away before it would mold. They would give it to me and I’d drive it around and donate it to other food pantries. I only quit when my car  broke and I couldn’t afford to get if fixed. I miss that and I wonder if someone else started  driving the bread.”

 

Here is what I learned today:  Church matters. It matters, I think, enough or even more to the folks who are not in the pews than it does to us pew sitters.  What should matter for  us churchy folk is  the mirror of cultural perception. All those Spiritual But Not Religious, Lapsed Whatevers,  Grew Up In A Tradition But Quit Goings, still care about what we believe, what we say about the Bible and their lives. They are sitting home and watching the Discovery Chanel, the National Geographic Chanel, the History Chanel and they are filtering what they are hearing through the lens of whatever they remember from as much Sunday School as they got. They are filtering it through the who they year the Christian church is on the news and they believe what they are told, at the same level of faith development that they had when they were 6 or 7 or 12 years old.

All these things do not make sense to them and how they have experienced life and who they are and who they fear they are…. So they are not in our churches. They look to google and drink, sex and sports and drugs and whatever else they  can find to distract or numb or forget or avoid.

I learned this because something deep inside me, the Holy Spirit me thinks, got me responding to a question in my morning group with a brief overview of how the cannon was developed —they had no idea that there was an oral tradition and that the Bible as we came together as the result of men sitting around deciding what parts of the tradition to include and exclude— and the realities of “Biblical Authority” –they’d never considered that folks who claim it to support their position have picked over and left out all kinds of Biblical injunctions that they’ve decided no longer have hold over their lives.

And because there were gay folk in the room, I gave a brief overview of how the Bible once was used in this country to unreflectively enforce slavery and to subjugate women (issues I am aware upon which we still need to work). I told them briefly about the overwhelming medical evidence supporting the truth that same gender sexual orientation is as natural as heterosexual orientation.

To my amazement, the folks in the group were on the edge of their seats. They were finding the words of grace for which they’d been longing. Even the souls, who, by the everyday beliefs and practices and configurations we live in most of our churches, we’d consider the most reprobate, couldn’t get enough of this unexpected grace.  “I like what you’re selling,” is a compliment from a reformed gangbanger with several stints as guest of the state, especially one committed to trying to turn his life around.

These folks who are not in our pews need to be, not for us so we don’t die. Are we not to follow Christ’s command to be proclaiming the salvation of humankind? And isn’t the salvation of God’s compassionate live for their very lives, exactly what they are looking for.  

It matters then for more than just us churchy folk, what we say we believe and how we live what we believe and how we treat one another and the least among us.  Was not the marker of the earliest followers the proclamation from those who were not among their numbers, “See how they live one another?” And, do we not love Jesus loving our neighbors, especially those who are the least? In these we exhibit the Kingdom of heaven to the world.