Orlando Proves America Doesn't Just Have A Gun Problem

On June 12th, forty-nine people were murdered. Forty-nine!! Forty-nine members of Orlando’s LGBT community were gunned down in a gay club. After a police officer spotted Omar Mateen and exchanged gunfire with him in the street, forty-nine LGBT people, PEOPLE were savagely snuffed out of existence. That morning I was at church, and was not glued to a TV. However, I was aware of the news, and through the morning, horror settled on me as I watched the number of confirmed dead climb. It may be the saddest I have ever felt in church. The service, which was lead beautifully by our youth, was difficult to follow, and there are parts I don’t remember because my mind kept being drawn back to what was going on one thousand miles away. 

My mind and heart wanted to find some grasp of just how deadly this event was, but it was hard. Eventually, I realized that forty-nine was just under half the number of people I worshiped with that morning. This morning, I sat down and hand wrote a list of forty-nine names of people I know. Just off the top of my head. People I have actually had real conversations with and relationships. They are not all deep or abiding friendships, but I can list forty-nine people, and I am sure you can, too. And then, I wept.

I wept because my wife and I had just started watching last night’s episode of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. After his opening speech, which is a deep and powerful call for Americans to change the script of our cultural response, Colbert’s first guest went to work doing what we do after an event like this. He acknowledged its tragedy, and then he intellectualized it and made it into a product of international terrorism. Then, he called for war. And I mean a real war; the kind where there is an actual declaration from a joint session of congress, and then the nationalization of industries to support such an effort. (The video can be seen here and here.)

As Colbert tried to redirect and focus the questions around Omar Mateen’s birth in the US, it brought me back to something I have written about before. America loves violence. Just Sunday afternoon, and again on Monday, the dominant rhetoric surrounding our country's possible response was all about how we could attack an enemy. Donald Trump started using language that stripped any association to American society from Mateen, and lay the blame at the feet of “these people,” meaning ISIS and his warped understanding of Islam. Responses are not around how American society responds to violence by Americans against Americans because they are members of the LGBT community, and our continuing relationship/fetish with firearms. Instead, it is how does American society respond to some external threat. Focusing on his faith, wipes away a discussion of the shooters own connection to the LGBT people of Orlando, and Club Pulse in particular. And the majority of the proposed responses are violent. 

What if our problem isn’t external, but internal?

What if the cause is not just a different religious ideology from our own, but our own inability to grapple with our differences?

What if, in our rush to anger, we miss the root of the evil entirely?

I can’t answer all of these questions, or really give any answers. I am going to use this place to voice my opinions, however. In so doing, I must acknowledge how painful this is for all of us, and it should be. When I reflect on the events of Sunday, June 12th through my lenses as a straight, white, cisgendered male, I have to open up the scope of my vision beyond just that morning. When I do, I don’t find it as something that is just tragic, but the product of our own deep-seated violence. How could we expect something different after some of our political and religious (and here) leaders have advocated for the death of LGBT people? When we talk about this event in retrospect and refuse to recognize that the victims were either members or allies of the LGBT community, or publicly show our callousness by calling for more violence against the LGBT community, what do we think will happen next?

There is a tight feeling that settles in my chest today. It’s not hate but mourning that brings me such discomfort. I’m mourning the loss of life that has occurred, and I am mourning a loss of some of the hope that has buoyed me through past struggles. I do not hate my country, or my faith, or my representatives, or even Donald Trump because of the things that have been said, or not said, before and after this recent act of horrific violence. What we need is mutual liberation, and no amount of hate can bring that about. I, instead, mourn. I mourn our failings, and the loss, and the death of some of my hope.

But I am also reminded today, in the midst of angry words against a people and a faith not my own, that Jesus wasn’t American. Jesus wasn’t a Christian. But I am a follower of Jesus, and one thing he told us to do when things like this happen was to pray for our enemies. In the midst of the last few days, I haven’t done that. But I am going to now, and I am going to write that prayer, in case you want it for yourself.

O God, I lift up to you Omar Mateen. 

He has caused a great deal of pain, but for his soul I ask mercy. 

For his family, who loved their son, I ask peace. 

For the dead, receive them into your care and hold them close as your beloved children. 

For the wounded, be near them in their suffering and anoint their scares with your love. 

For those who hate, wrap them in the arms of love. 

And for us who feel powerless in our mourning, draw us to a new and beautiful day.

Amen

Right Sermon, Wrong Place

(Image is not from Last Night)

Last night I had the great opportunity to preach to a congregation that is a part of Church of the Saviour in Washington DC. Last week, as I was preparing my presentation, I struggled with what topic to focus on. The person who had invited me had felt his inspiration from a sermon I preached at another church that talked about the plight of Millennials in the Church. As I prepared, however, I read and reflected on somethings in my own life that seemed to fit the texts for the evening better. In the end, my words focused more on the actions of Jesus and Elijah in the texts from the Lectionary for June 5th, Year C. There, Jesus and the prophet both reach out and touch dead people in order to raise them from the dead. 

I talked about a book from Richard Beck called, “Unclean,” where he talks about the principle of contamination that was part of the common religious practice of both Jesus and Elijah. I wanted to highlight how the Church is given an image of reaching into places where others would fear contamination. I highlighted it by telling my story of struggling with depression. Many of the events and consequences of which I had never told my wife before as she sat there and listened. It was a good night, and one that felt honest and whole. The presence of the Triune God was deeply felt in that place.

When we got home, my wife commented that it was a great presentation, but that it should probably have been preached at her church on a Sunday morning and not in that place. She felt there was little risk in sharing that night, and though it was well-received, my story was not as much of a challenge to the group from Church of the Saviour. In hindsight, I agree that there was very little risk in sharing certain details of my life with depression in front of that group. But, I challenged her by asking if she really thought such a sermon would actually help her congregation, or responses of resentment and dismissal in reaction to their discomfort. In the end, we agreed that, most likely, controversy and not action or reflection would have been the end result.

Our conversation caused me to reflect on something I heard on one of my favorite podcasts. Tripp Fuller, during one of the episodes of Homebrewed Christianity, talked about how most ministers can only tell their congregation 50% of what they believe for fear of being fired. It brought to mind a joke from undergrad; a group of us thought that most ministers were probably more “liberal” or “progressive” than their congregations and that it would never change. When I think of last night, I feel a mixture of joy that such an open place of worship exists, and pain that such a place is so rare. 

The point of writing about it today, though, is to put that question out in the open. How true is it that in order to be in a church, ministers, or even fully engaged lay-people, have to hide part of themselves in order to be accepted? I have my own answers from my own experiences as a staff minister, active layperson, and friend of minsters, but I wonder how many have actually thought about it. 

Do we actually consider the fact that we are hiding part of who we are and how we engage with God? 

Is it good for our congregations to never hear the more “controversial” parts of our belief systems?

It goes without saying that our overall culture is very polarized. (It doesn’t take a hack from some backwater blog to tell you that.) Conflicts over ideas are heated and full of vitriol. I remember all the way back to undergrad hearing fellow students argue about theology, and heard some of the rather short-sighted proclamations made about those on the opposite side. I know that because of such arguments, I have kept my mouth shut at times because I didn’t want conflict in my life, but does avoiding conflict really serve the best interests of the Church?

What would it be like if we actually proclaimed what we felt to be true?

How different would the Church look if we stopped hiding part of ourselves?

You Should Be Easier On Your Pastor

I remember when I preached my first sermon. I was in high school, and had talked my youth minister into having a Youth Led Sunday for the first time in the church's history. Since it was my idea, and I had already said I wanted to be a minister, I volunteered to preach that morning. My pastor, who though I haven’t seen him in years I still think is a great preacher, loaned me some commentaries, though I had no idea how to use them. I remember asking him if he got nervous before he preaches. He told me, “Every time. I think that the first time I don’t get nervous will be the day I give it up.” 

The sermon itself was not all that memorable. One thing that does stick with me is how there were probably five or so sermons in that one passage, and I tried to preach them all that first day. Regardless, I’ve had a lot of practice since then. Not as much as some, but I’ve had opportunities to stretch my skills on occasion. My old pastor was right, I still get nervous. I worry about fumbling over words, or not reading the correct passage for the sermon, or droning on like white noise. It’s not unique to worry about such things, and I hold no illusion that I’m the only one who gets nervous. Even though I am someone who is comfortable speaking in front of a group, my pulse quickens, and I can hear my heart pumping in my ears. I am human, after all.

While all of those worries and fears are valid, they are all internal. I can control how fast or able I can speak. I use bookmarks and stickies to make sure I read the correct passage, and I have the ability to work with the energy in the room. However, there is one fear I can not control, and that is how you are going to respond. No matter how much I prepare and how much I pray, your response is entirely your own. It’s one of the downsides to being human. I can’t force you to like what I say or agree with my position. If there was a way to exert some sort of control over people’s tastes and preferences, my favorite candidate would always get elected, music would always be good, and I everyone would make art that reflects and appeals to my sensibilities. In essence, life would be so much easier. 

I don’t remember where I heard it, but I was told that the hardest thing to change is what someone else thinks/believes. It’s why political polarization and disagreement exist. It’s why you can’t convince your uncle at Thanksgiving that Jerry Jones is not actually working on a premeditated plan to make the Dallas Cowboys the laughing stock of the NFL. He truly believes it, and it is something that goes much deeper than evidence. There are a whole host of issues that we will believe regardless of the facts, evidence, or persuasiveness put forth by the opposing side. What most people do think about is how that affects the way your pastor puts together their sermon for the week. 

I don’t know about everybody, but I have always viewed preaching as something close to an art. The ones who do it well are some of my biggest heroes, and there are good number of those heroes that are dead or I have never met. One day during seminary, during a class on the Old Testament Prophets, we watched MLK’s, “I Have A Dream,” speech/sermon from the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Afterwards, we were discussing his use of the words of Amos, and how the words of the prophets about justice functioned for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I remember saying, “I wish more ministers would stand up and preach like that in their church’s.” Dr. Frampton, who is a rock star at my seminary, replied, “Imagine you were a pastor of a church in the south in 1964. The Civil Rights Act had just passed, and you are preparing for your sermon. Do you write your resignation letter and keep it in your desk because you are going to tell your white church that they have been functioning contrary to the message of God? Or do you begin a long slow process of, ‘bending the morale arc’ of your church toward justice?” It was the first time someone had ever put the thought, in a very eloquent manner, directly into my lap. While I wasn’t as young and naive as I had been when I preached my first sermon, I still believed that ministry in the local church was all about just doing the best I can to follow God. I still hadn’t accounted for the fact that there were other people involved. 

That's the thing about serving in the local church they don’t really talk to you about in seminary. When Dr. King delivered some of his post powerful speeches, his words were not for the members of the movement. They already believed those things. It was for the white community that had either supported segregation or remained unengaged in the struggle. 

When William Sloane Coffin preached in support of nuclear disarmament, he wasn’t preaching to the people of Riverside Church because many of them were already supporting such a position. 

Most of the ministers I know are not preaching to their congregation, at least not the whole congregation. It’s because they are having to hold their base of support together. While we long to preach truth to power like Jesus and the Old Testament prophets did, we are getting our salaries and benefits from that power. 

I believe the old saying is, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

For many ministers, we dream of the day when we can really cut loose from the pulpit or in a Bible study, tell you what really animates our passions, and bring on an altar call of people who want to walk with us in that passion. However, very few ministers feel that if they were to do such a thing they would be run out on a rail. I joke with people that I am a person who tends to like pushing the hot topics, and says what they think. However, I get that luxury because I am not serving a local church. And it’s in the local church that ministers are supporting families. Your tithes and offerings are paying that person’s salary, putting braces on their kid’s teeth, and paying for college degree that the parent hopes they will use. Not only is ministry then an expression of someone’s passion, but it’s a livelihood.

Often, those family concerns, and the politics of navigating a congregation have much more influence over the topic of the sermon for any given week than the Liturgical calendar. For instance, you have to be very careful how far you push sermons about turning the other cheek or loving your enemy in a place where there are a lot of NRA members. Jokes about being shot aside, the minister can easily be asked to leave or publicly apologize after a sermon like that. Same when it comes to issues like poverty, refugee response, education, or religious liberty. While every minister has opinions on those matters, the ones you have probably heard are the ones that sound an awful lot like your own. 

Early in seminary, my friends and I used to joke that ministers were always more progressive than their congregation. We thought it was a really funny thing to say as we were beginning ministry and running headlong into the situations where you say a little more than you should have. However, as time went on, and we got closer to graduation, we stopped making that joke. First of all, it’s not true. Ministers, just like people everywhere hold a wide variety of views on all kinds of issues. Most importantly, we stopped saying it because we had started to feel the weight of just how influential our words are on our futures. We either heard stories of people losing positions for saying things their congregation thought were controversial, or we had gotten into some serious issues ourselves. 

It makes that one spot in the front of the sanctuary where everyone is staring at you kinda scary. I mean, in a way, your job is on the line.

An Open Letter to the Church From a Millennial

Dear Church,

I must admit that I am not normally the one to write something like this. There have been letters from writers of higher esteem like Rachel Held Evans, Shane Claiborne, or any of a host of people at patheos.com have already responded to such generational issues. However, I want to participate in this discussion, because It’s starting to get under my skin, and as a servant of God’s Church, I am invested in our future. 

Said future looks rather uncertain at the moment. Ever since research, from the Pew Foundation or other groups, said that my generation was largely turning its collective back on the Church, leaders have been asking, and congregations begging, for ministries to reach Millennials. My wife, for instances, was called to a local church with the expressed prerogative of creating a ministry for young adults from whole cloth. She is one of the most creative, and relational, people I have ever met, and so I have no doubt that she can do this.

In order to accomplish that task her church, and the Church in general, need to have a conversation over what is said and believed about Millennials in the Church. That’s why I am writing this. Not just for her, but for myself because I am both a Millennial and a minister. My service in the beloved community is affected by your words, and so is my relationship. As I continue to walk this path before me, it becomes more and more difficult to stay with the people already in God’s Church. 

Often, that difficulty comes when people talk about my generation as inherently lazy, or entitled. Often, this remark contains some sort of slight at how many of us are returning to our parents after we graduate from college, or some there time during our twenties of thirties. If it’s not the image of a young person returning to their parents, it’s how we received “participation” trophies from our sports leagues as children. It’s stated as an obvious fact that if we didn’t have the experience of competing for things, then we just do not understand the value of hard work. Sometimes, that leads into talking about our screen addiction, or how we are too tolerant, or theologically unengaged, or unable to handle criticism. 

It’s not that these are new stereotypes that I have never heard before, but it I just can’t bear it any longer. As one of the Millennial generation, although one of the older ones, these stereotypes have begun to rub through my defenses like a piece of sand paper. Maybe it was only a matter of time, or maybe I was hiding in a hole and remained oblivious to these postings. However it happened, these points have started to have an impact on me, and I can only assume they have an impact on others. What were meant as sincere attempts at either humorous anecdotes or earnest pleas for correction carry with them another message that may not be intended, but is nevertheless powerful. That unintended message is what I hope can be brought to the fore.

When I see these videos, or read these articles, my first question is, “why would I or anyone else who identifies as a Millennial want to participate in the Church?” It seems so unwelcoming to be in a place that says it wants you, but then to be told you are lazy, entitled, technology addicted, feckless, flaky, or unable to handle criticism. There is an inherent conflict in this message. If the Church wants to talk about how much it needs my generation, it would be counter-productive to then turn around and paint the generation as unworthy. Why would I want to belong to such a church? 

Of course, maybe I’m only saying these things because I “don’t take criticism well.” However, I can’t even comment on what I am hearing or how I am emotionally processing this, because that would be to fight back against potential criticism, which is what trips the idea that I don’t take it well. If you would allow me a moment of snark, maybe I can make my point a little more clearly. It’s difficult for me to take many of these statements against Millennials seriously. I mean, why is my fault that I received a Participation trophy during little league sports? I wasn’t on the board of the league that came up with the trophies, my parents were. Why is it my fault that I use screens so much? I didn’t invent the internet, iPod, or social media, nor did I fill the Church with screens, employ prodigious use of the internet for worship, or start the push for a more “hip” church; my parents generation did. Why am I lazy for going back to my parents because I can’t afford to live on my own? My generation didn’t author or pass the legislation that lead to the Great Recession, nor are we the majority of job creators in our society. But I’m just whining because I “don’t take criticism well.”

The biggest obstacle to overcome in terms of the Church and Millennials reaching a point of reconciliation is the fact that there is no ground for a conversation, currently. No one likes criticism. Especially when the things that require the most intense scrutiny are the things that are closest to our hearts or our perceptions of being. Being dismissive of each other will never heal the Church, and to say the Church is in need of healing is not an overreaction. If we want to discuss brokenness, this is a great place to start. Our relationships between the generations are broken, and that will harm us more than anything. If we can’t relate from one generation to another, then there is little hope of a future for the Church. It’s not the first time we have had to overcome generational differences, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. But dismissing me while trying to draw me in will not heal the divide. 

May we find a better future.

Sincerely,

One of your Beloved Children.

Do You Love Me

This sermon was preached for the Third Sunday of Easter at McLean Baptist Church in McLean, VA. My wife, Meg, is the Minister to Youth and Young Adults. You should check them out at: http://www.mcleanbaptist.org/

You can watch the video from YouTube, or listen to the sermon from SoundCloud on your phone.

“Do you love me?” No four words can cause more problems in my house than those. Meg and I use them all the time, in different situations. Often, I use them to shame her into feeding our dog. I will ask the dog, “Do you love me? Does your mother love you?” Of course, Meg pets him and walks him often…it’s the feeding part that I bug her with though. At times, we uses those words in those quiet moments where we need reassurance that we are not alone. We both use them when we are trying to get out of the frustration of not having done that “thing” we were asked to do. 

“Do you love me?” Every person on the planet wants to feel love. We crave it as one of the things that completes us and allows the individual to recognize their value. Interestingly, we, in this community, live in a culture that has for generations tried to downplay the need of love in our lives. Sure, we have always communicated a strong message that the idea of family is what completes our existence, or shows that we have truly succeeded in life. But in order to achieve those goals, we must toil and strive alone, hiding our need to be loved because we view it as a weakness that can hamper us from reaching our cultural goals. In order to be seen as successful in a world we describe as “dog eat dog,” “needy” is an adjective we can not afford to have hung on us. 

“Do you love me?” It’s a question that can leave you feeling vulnerable. The question expresses need and lays bare feelings of inadequacy. Can you truly be deserving of love? But in a world with so many swirling questions of race, gender, nationality, socio-economic concerns, religion, and politics, could this question be any more important to our very existence as children of God? 

Just a few weeks ago, I read a blog from a young minister talking bout how they feel in church. Like myself, this person is a millennial. We vaguely remember Reagan, we were there when all the cultural icons of the 90s were huge, and now we are the ones trying to find our way in the world post-college or grad school. Every church is struggling with what to do now that the largest generation in America doesn’t attend church. Whether you are reading the Barna Group, Pew Research, or any of a number of blogs by millennial writers, the word is out that my generation is post-Christian. Depending on the commentator, we are called lazy because many of us return to live with our parents, entitled because as a group our sports leagues started the practice o recognizing participation alongside victory, technology addicted because many of us do not remember a time without the internet, or disruptive because we have very few issues with asking questions of authority or our culture. Never mind that we are also the most highly educated generation, with more college graduates than any group before us, or the most indebted generation because we were encouraged to go and get that education, or the one with the fewest options because entry-level jobs do not pay on the same scale as they did before us.

This minister is trying to reconcile that existence with a world where the church is also struggling to know what to do with us. How can the church attract millennials when they don't join things? What new program can we put together to get them thought he door? However,  they asks questions of the Church, the one with the big “c”, and some of these questions are great because they express feelings I have heard from others. Will the Church treat us as more than props to show that you are growing, and allow us to actually find our place? Will you allow us to define ourselves instead of labeling us into groups such as “single,” “married without children,” or “married with children?” Can this Church be a place where we can ask our questions, or is that too much to ask? I have asked these questions, point blank, of the church that ordained me, and I heard the stories of heartache as my friends who are ministers, and millennials, were asked the same. 

“Do you love me?” A question that flows beneath all of the searching of a generation who is seeking its place in the world. It’s a question that cuts deep to the heart. As we read the story this morning, there are things that stand out in the telling. The disciples, after having caught nothing the entire night of fishing, follow the advice of this person they don’t know who is telling them to drop their nets just a few feet from where they had just pulled them up. Though they had caught 153 fish, this person they now know to be Jesus is already cooking fish for them when they arrive. And then, Jesus ignores the other disciples to talk only to Simon Peter. This is a story we know, fairly well. Though growing up, my church didn’t follow the Lectionary, we still heard a sermon on this passage at least once a year. To say nothing of the many Bible studies that would have something about this passage during Sunday School. While it may not be as strongly burned into your memory as say John 3:16, we at least feel familiar with the story. 

We are familiar with how Simon Peter’s three denials during Jesus’ trial are echoed here in Jesus’ three questions. This is the place where Peter is restored after having failed so painfully on that most painful of days. For most of the Gospel story, Peter has been one of the most inconsistent of followers. He is able to to both inspire those around him with strong declarations of faith and fidelity, and then able to fall so horribly short of the standard that he becomes the subject of sermon jokes. When we read the Gospels many of us both want to be Peter, and also want to smack him on the back of the head. Though we recognize that we are the outsiders looking into this story where we already know the ending, Peter still makes us cringe with his naïveté. After hearing those parables and seeing the miracles, how does he not get where Jesus is going? When the Christ reaches out and touches the outcaste, dines with the socially reprehensible, undermines cultural leaders, embraces people who are not considered people, chooses to associate with the poor instead of the rich, and casts disparaging remarks toward Caesar as the king, how did Peter not see what was coming? 

“Do you love me?” This Easter season, as the front page of the bulletin describes, is one of great joy and celebration lasting till Pentecost. Starting two weeks ago, we were given a great opportunity to remember and celebrate the joy of proclaiming, “He is Risen. He is Risen, Indeed.” In the development of Christian thought, there is no bigger event than Easter. Our forebears in the faith felt it was so important that it is recorded in all four Gospels. Not only are there four accounts, the community that has followed Christ has found them each so compelling that they kept all four. We are an Easter people. All that is our existence as the children of God comes from our Easter experience. As Jurgen Moltmann said, “All faith begins and ends at the Cross.” We find our place in Easter, we find our hope in Easter, we find our reason in Easter. 

Easter is the culmination of the story of God continually reaching out to those on the fringes, or even beyond the walls of society. Whether it’s calling children close, speaking to and being questioned by a Samaritan woman, healing leapers, or defending prostitutes, Jesus’ life displayed that God’s love is directed at lifting up those who are being pushed down. The life of Christ is one that called people to walk out onto the edges of their own existence and face the possibility of a world turned on its ear. In the words so often printed in red we find the call to seek out a world where all can come to the table. Jesus laid the first stones on a new path that pushed beyond the horizon to a new world where the banquet table was set for the beggar in the name of the King. The event of Easter itself, of death and resurrection wrapped around the question of being forsaken shows that God is on the side of those called God-forsaken. 

“Do you love me?” With those things in mind, we turn our eyes back to the disciple who had forsaken God by denying His son. It is here in this moment by the lake, when we look into the eyes of a disciple who had seen so much and failed so many times, that God reaches out to reconcile one who had forsaken God. Peter’s denials may have been to save his skin from certain association with the man on trial at the time, but their implications are much greater than that. We have to understand what it meant for Peter to say what he said before we can fully grasp how much forgiveness was really at stake. 

“Do you love me?” One of the things I have thought a lot about over the last couple of years as Meg and I have moved around is just how different I am now from how I was when I grew up. I’m sure each of you have experienced that feeling at some point in your life. We change as we grow up and have new experiences. Today, I stand over a thousand miles from where I grew up, and that is not just a statement of geography. When I think back on that place and time, I remember the friends I had. I remember the people from school that I don’t speak with anymore. We all grow up and change, but I think back to that ignorant, arrogant guy who said some mean things, and wish he knew what I now know. Which isn’t all that much.  But I pushed away people for rather unenlightened reasons. Those slight embarrassments are a part of my story, and who I am today just like similar stories make up all of our experiences. 

Simon Peter, though, wasn’t just distancing himself from the kids in his hometown and not calling them again. Jesus was the image of the invisible God on Earth, and Peter denied ever knowing him. What is at stake on that lake shore is not just forgiving a friend who said he had nothing to do with you when you went on an unpopular political rant on Facebook. Jesus was asking Peter, the man who had denied knowing God Incarnate, to come back. Come back and be a part of the story again. The story that was feeding hungry people, touching sick people, healing broken people, and comforting forgotten people.

“Do you love me?” It’s also a part of our story because the story doesn’t end on that lake shore. It exists in twenty-three other books in the New Testament. That story stretches from the Ancient Near East around the globe through 2,000 years of strife and struggle. Through persecution, heresy, Reformation, conflict, and awakening. In all those times, the story has moments where this scene on the lake is played out again and again. Where “Do you love me?” is not just a collection of letters on a page in different languages for different people, but the actual call from the Spirit of God. It rings out again and again for us.   In times of colonialism, Inquisition, racism, political discord, and war, the voice of God calls out to those who have forsaken God and asks, “Do you love me?”

Each time, the Church has found its way to say, “You know I love you, Lord.” Sometimes it caused us pain, just as it did for Peter. That pain is deep, for it would be simplistic to say that our failings were premeditated attempts to subvert the plot. Rather, we lost our way. We got scared because it was a moment where we were standing on the in the courts with others asking us if we knew the man, and we reacted out of our fear of being implicated. We did it without thinking, without considering, but because we felt something. For all that humanity would like to think itself a creature of rational logic, we are really making our decisions with our emotions. We were blind-sided by the moment where we were called to account. The Church found itself standing with an angry mob, just trying to get a better view of that thing over there when the mob turned and said, “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be a disciple like those out there?” And in a moment of panic because we saw how hard it was out there, we said, no.

“Do you love me?” Peter’s question becomes our question. Peter’s response, our response. “You know all things, Lord. You know that we love you.” The response is uttered through the pain of remembered betrayal. We squint in the blinding ray of forgiveness that is calling in those who have forsaken God. This penetrating question, that exposes the vulnerability of a betrayed God, exposes us as well. We can not run from it, can not give the non-answer answer. We look at our story. The question has been there through the ages. And it is at Easter we are called to rejoice that we are asked this question. God is offering an opportunity to move through the pain of betrayal into the joy of celebrating the Resurrection. “Do you love me?

Are We The Twin

I should first apologize for not writing anything for awhile. Needless to say, things got busy. This post is the transcript of a sermon I preached this last week at Belle View Baptist Church in Alexandria, VA. It was a good morning, and I think a pretty good sermon. I had hoped to have audio for it, but my recorder crashed five minutes into the sermon. So, all you get is the text. I pray you all have a good week, and look forward to getting back in the swing of things.

“Are We The Twin?”

John 20:19-31

Faith and doubt. Did you know that the majority of people will strongly believe something negative about a public figure without much evidence, yet continually doubt positive affirmations regardless of the support? Faith and doubt. We have total faith that people are as bad as we always believed they were anyway, but constantly doubt whether something good is real. Faith and doubt. We just “know” that our pursuits and endeavors will come to fiery end, but doubt that we make a real difference in the world around us. Faith and doubt. Obviously, most Americans see the world as a place for caution where we should always question, because we fear the world turning upside down on us. Yet, things that work exactly as planned leave that anxious feeling in our stomach as if the other shoe is about to drop. Faith and doubt. 

It sounds exhausting, to say the least. Yet, it happens so quickly and with such regularity that it can be difficult to see the world in any other way. We have developed habits that are the closest thing to automatic responses outside of the urge to take a breath. Doubting what we see has grown into a natural part of our lives. It takes effort to to have faith in something. It’s why Christian culture, at least that which I grew up in, mocked doubters as lazy, painted skeptics as intellectually dishonest, and agnostics as those unwilling to make commitments.

Faith and doubt. The Church struggles to talk about faith and doubt together. We idealize faith, and the Scriptures give us a “Hall of Fame” of faith’s greatest models. We command people to have faith, we debate the essence of faith, and we struggle to express or “live in” to our faith. We spend so much time talking about faith that we rarely, if ever, confront or express real doubt. I don’t know what it was like in this church, but as a child and teenager, we never stopped talking about or trying to enhance the strength of our faith. It was part of every class, or Bible study.

Faith and doubt. When doubt did become a topic, it was addressed with equal parts fear and loathing. I remember a pastor talking about doubt as “the principal weapon of the the enemy” when preaching about how the thief comes in the night. Doubt would sneak up on us when we least expected it. As a youth, we were told that doubt first manifested itself in the lives of those who were complacent in their faith. It came in the good times, those times when you didn’t pray as much because you didn’t feel there was anything wrong to worry about. And because you had allowed doubt to creep in, we were told that is why the bad times happened in the first place. Looking back, doubt was a convenient way to blame the victim for struggles of life. Doubt is always the opposite of faith. It was the Lex Luthor to the Superman that is faith. It is the darkness to the light.

Doubt became this boogey man that was always waiting to pick you off if you strayed from the narrow path of faith that had been laid out by those who taught us. It was the justification for why people did not express or speak of their faith exactly the same way we did. Those with different theology were just people unfortunate enough to fall to the trap of doubt. It took me years to figure out what was going on. I had spoken the same words and affirmed the same principles. Only after I experienced real tragedy and began to ask questions did it dawn on me. Doubt was how we kept things in order. As I struggled through my own experience of how the world was not quite as fair as I had believed, I was being told to “let go of my doubt and have faith.” It happened one day when I was pastoring an international church overseas. 

Faith. My wife and I had been married for just a few months and taken this position as co-pastors of an English-language church in Bali. Before we left, we knew we would be there for only a few months. The church did not have the financial ability to support ministers for long tenures, and it wasn’t connected to any specific denomination or missions organization. But we thought it would be an adventure. We didn’t have kids, very little debt, and so we threw caution to the wind and moved halfway around the world. Now, we weren’t totally without reason. When we returned, she was going to start seminary, and I was sending out resumes all over trying to find a place to serve. While we were living this part of our adventure, we were going to prepare for the next part. We dug into our ministry with deep faith and fell in love with the most diverse group of people you will ever meet. On any given Sunday there were half a dozen nationalities and languages meeting in our small church, and all of them had made a conscious choice to worship in English. It was a beautiful, creative time where I truly felt we were living in the present what the Kingdom of God would look like in the future. 

Doubt. There is a day in the Revised Common Lectionary that comes during Eastertide, every year. At the end of the Gospel reading in John 14, Jesus tells the Disciples, “do not be afraid.” As our time overseas had marched toward its predetermined conclusion, I was not getting anywhere in terms of finding a place to serve when we returned. We were going to be homeless, without income, and left to the generosity of our families. While that is a steadfast bedrock for both of us, it was not how we had pictured our adventure, nor was it the hope on which I had staked my call. I knew, and still know today, that I was called to be a servant in God’s Church, yet I was not seeing where we were to go next. We were both doing everything we could to keep the stress to ourselves. That week, as I prepared for the sermon, the only think I knew to do was to lay out my own fear and doubt. I wanted to start a conversation among the church about how difficult it can be to follow the command of Jesus, and not be afraid. That day at the pulpit, I struggled and for sure, it was not one of my best delivered sermons. 

As the service ended and we had the time of response, I sat at this small table we had set up to the side of the worship area. It was meant to signify that this time of invitation was an opportunity to start a conversation. A member of the church from South Africa, a man of deep devotion…which means we argued a lot about how best to articulate faith and doctrine, came to sit at the table. He put his hand on my shoulder, trying to comfort and give me support. He looked directly into my face and he told me, “You need to have more faith.” Something in me broke at that moment. I was almost completely overwhelmed with a flood of emotion that I was not prepared to sift through. I was angry and offended. I had been struggling with these feelings of inadequacy and doubt for months, knowing that I still had faith that my calling was to ministry, but not seeing the path of where to go next. Later, he and I would talk about that moment, and I was able to truly express my frustrations and anxieties to him in a way that was able to communicate that there was deep faith still in my heart. Then, he was able to tell me of his own struggles of doubt that he had also been hiding.

We learned, together, in that moment, something that Christian mystics had been talking about for centuries. Faith and doubt are not opposites. They are compliments. 

Faith and doubt. These two parts of our lives co-exist in all of us. They happen all the time when we make decisions. Is this the best investment for my future? Is this the best time to change my practice of living? We know on the one hand that we are being given a great opportunity, but we also doubt whether this opportunity is really for us. 

One of the things I have always lamented about the Gospel text for today is that some Bibles put in the title “Doubting Thomas” before this story. In truth, I don’t really like titles in my Bible anyway. Editors added them in recent decades, and I question not only their veracity as ways to understand the text, but how they break up the thoughts and message. However, that is something best discussed in a long Bible study. For today, let’s just focus on Thomas. This story is one that we know pretty well, or at least we have heard it read in church often enough that it’s familiar to us. That can be one of the problems with Bible passages like this as well. We feel familiar with the text enough that we don’t really read it that often.

This text is more dramatic than I tend to give it credit. It is set on Easter Sunday. Already, the community that had followed Jesus were busy. Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the Beloved Disciple had already gone to the tomb. Mary had an encounter with someone she thought was a gardner, but was in fact the risen Jesus. She had already told the other disciples of her experience, in essence being the first person to share the Gospel of the risen Christ. All of this happens just before we pick up in verse 19. 

Faith and doubt. The Disciples, sans Thomas, are gathered in a locked room, presumably hiding for fear of their being implicated with Jesus and crucified when the Christ appears and shows them his hands and side. Then Thomas shows up afterwards, and asks for the exact same thing they other disciples had already experienced. However, he is the one who is labeled as doubting. There are so many things in this small passage to talk about. In John’s Gospel, this is the arrival of the Holy Spirit, this is the Great Commission, and this is the place where doubt and faith meet. John’s Gospel has been telling us all the way through that the Disciples don’t get it. They don’t get it when it comes to the place of children in the Kindom of God. They don’t get it when it comes to the need for miracles. They don’t get it when it comes to Jesus’ rejection of violence and surrender to crucifixion, and they don’t get it when it comes to the resurrection.

Faith and doubt. Thomas appears two other times in John’s Gospel as a character where his words are recorded. Once he is shown as courageous, offering to go and die with Jesus, and another time he is shown as theologically astute, asking good questions about how to follow Jesus when he is speaking cryptically of where he is going. In a way, I guess it goes to show that one, seemingly negative incident can brand you for life. The text doesn’t even tell us if Thomas put his hand in the wounds that Jesus offered, but there is a painting that depicts it, and so for many that is the image in our imagination. The people of the Gospel text watched everything they hoped for, but didn’t fully understand, come to ruin in the most painful and gruesome way they could have imagined. 

Then, 2000 years later, this group of know-it-alls come along and brand Thomas a “doubter.” We start with his doubt of the other’s witness that Jesus has risen. From there, the entire story is colored by Thomas’ doubt. Jesus offers words of blessing for those “who have not seen, and yet believe.” It should be an assurance for those who read the text that they are a blessed people because they believe without seeing, yet instead, it is seen as condemnation of those, like Thomas, who want to see. We turn this text of the miracle of the risen Christ into a zero-sum game about what it means to have faith. Ultimately, we label Thomas a “zero” because he saw, and believed. However, that’s not what the text tells us. Jesus asks him if it required sight for him to believe, and then proclaimed those who believe without seeing as “blessed.”

Faith and doubt. What does it matter if we pack these preconceptions about Thomas in this passage? Thomas still doubted before he had faith. I believe it helps us understand what we mean when we say we have faith. If anything, this passage teaches us what faith really is because Thomas and the Disciples had it at the end of this passage, and they were looking right at the risen Christ, yet we also have it, and we have never seen Jesus in the flesh. At least, I haven’t. Maybe you have. Regardless, the true measure of faith is not the ability to believe in something you can’t see. Faith is not like believing in the Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four. Something that is there, but you just can’t see. 

Faith is so much more. The Quaker theologian, D. Elton Trueblood, said, “faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation.” No one would disagree that at the end of this chapter, everyone involved has faith that God has raised Jesus to conquer death. Yet, they were given visual proof of his resurrection. Even Paul will see Jesus on the Damascus road, which will lead him to faith. Faith is so much stronger than something that just starts the life of one devoted to God. Faith is less about someone’s need to close their eyes, and more about how we stand on the promises. 

Faith and doubt. There’s one part of this we story from John we haven’t talked about yet. When Thomas is introduced, we are told that he also called “the Twin,” but we aren’t told why. This is the second time in John’s Gospel that the reader is told that Thomas is “the Twin,” but we are never told with whom he is a twin. Are they identical or fraternal? Why is it important for the reader to know that Thomas is a twin? Are they playing tricks on the Disciples by switching places with each other from time to time? 

What if “twin” has a bigger meaning? Maybe, we are the twin. I told you one of my stories of doubt. I’m fairly certain, that though I don’t know any of you, you could also share stories of doubt. Life is just too hard sometimes for there to never be doubt. I’ve heard doubt in the hospital rooms where I served as a chaplain, in the pews of the churches I’ve served as a pastor, on the streets where I’ve been a citizen, and in the quiet when my own voice of doubt starts to push against the silence. There’s more doubt now than I can ever remember. And in all that doubt we find Thomas’ twin, begging to see the risen Jesus. 

It’s in the voice of those who are saying, “that group over there, they are taking away our stuff.” It’s in the violence that breaks out because we think we have to fight to hold onto this illusion that our lives are fine, or that we already possess some “dream”. It’s in the voice of the preacher who realizes their church is getting smaller, getting older, and that the things they imagined ministry was going to be like…are not happening, and so they lash out at those people or this generation. It’s in the voice of the millennial who has become disillusioned because the church they grew up in is not big enough for their questions, or thinks they are too lazy and entitled to be important.  Those are the voices saying, “Unless I can touch…I will not believe.”

Doubt. It’s been three years since I served, with my wife, that church in Bali. In those three years, I’ve moved across the country, but have never served in God’s Church which I know I’m called to. And there were days when my doubt threatened to swallow me whole. I wanted so badly to touch and know that God was close. I am Thomas’ twin. I’ve heard my friends, my wife, remind me that I am called, but I did not believe. They all testified to what they had witnessed, and yet, I still doubted. If we are to call him “Doubting Thomas” then I am “Doubting Will.”

Faith. But I am also one of the ones that Jesus has called “blessed.” Because I have not seen, and yet I believe. It may not be the grand image of the prophet who pronounces, “Thus saith the Lord,” but I am here. I am here because I have faith in the promise of the Risen Christ. The one that breathed and said, “receive the Holy Spirit.” The one that said, “I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace…take courage; I have conquered the world.” It’s my trust without reservation. It’s the only way I know. I was told, and I put my trust in the telling. It can be difficult to imagine that faith and doubt can reside so close together. We imagine that the contrast between one place and the other is stark. That the line is bold on the pavement and so easy to see. 

Faith and doubt. I remember a story I read once when preparing to teach spiritual formation at a church I was serving. It was from the mid 1990’s and the Orthodox church that had existed in the former Soviet Bloc countries was coming out of hiding. An American journalist has been sent to interview one of their Patriarchs, or leaders. It was an in-depth interview of how this man had maintained his faith while hiding from governments that wanted to harm him. At some point in the interview, the journalist asked the Patriarch to describe his prayer life. Obligingly, the man told the journalist a prayer he had said often, and the journalist was a little surprised. I can’t remember what the prayer was exactly, but it had been very simple. Much too simple for such a person of deep faith, or so the journalist thought.

The Patriarch looked at him patiently and said, “We need not over-complicate it. Prayer is just talking to God.” Then, the Patriarch said something that really energized me. “Often, we imagine that the acts we do for God are complicated. And so, we get caught up in trying to figure out ‘how’ we are to do something. The difficult part, though is not in the ‘how,’ but in the ‘doing.’”

Faith and doubt. I often imagined that one was so different from the other. They were talked about as if it were like crossing a river and burning the bridge behind you. Now, it seems that the hard part is not in “how” I believe, but in the believing. “I” am the twin. I’m the one who has cried out to touch the hands and the side. I’m the one who didn’t believe the testimony of those who love me. But I’m also blessed. Because I, like you, am one who has not seen, and yet has believed. Amen

David Cameron “defies Obama,” or We Don’t Really Understand the term “Christian Nation.”

Today, one of my friends shared a post on Facebook. It had a video of UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s Easter message. The video was a brief statement from the Prime Minister to the people praising the work of Christians in the UK as they work to sort out the issues facing their country. It is very well crafted, delivered and communicates a strong message of Jesus’ message to those who are “the least of these.” I liked the message it sent of how welcoming Christianity is to those represent a different, or no, faith. The Prime Minister then goes on to speak directly about the shocking reality that we live in a world where Christians in some places are physically threatened for their faith, even losing their lives.

However, the thing that stuck out to me most is that the person who started the post put a header on it that read, “BREAKING: UK’s Prime Minister Defies Obama: Makes Huge Statement About Christianity.” As someone who likes to think they stay well informed, I don’t understand this heading. Members of the UK’s government make statements around Christian holidays every year, such as the Queen’s yearly Christmas message. Prime Minister Cameron gave almost the exact same message the year before. The really creepy part is he seems to wearing the exact same suit as well. If you look on YouTube, Mr. Cameron has even made short videos at Ramadan, Diwali, and Vaisakhi, as well. 

In the Easter message, itself, the Prime Minister neither addresses the U.S., nor does he mention President Obama. Instead, the address is targeted directly at the people of the UK. I personally believe one thing that does perk the ears of viewers, however, is that Mr. Cameron does call the UK, “A Christian Nation.” I’m sure for some that seems like the brave to do, and the one thing that could be seen as slamming President Obama. But I believe if you were to ask Prime Minister Cameron, he would say that there is nothing in the address that has anything to do with President Obama, or the United States.

You see, there is a great difference between the UK and the US. When the Prime Minister calls his country, a Christian nation, he is correct. The Church of England (or Anglican Church) is a national church. It’s Archbishop of Canterbury is a member of the House of Lords in the parliament (along with 25 other bishops and archbishops), and the monarch is seen as the ceremonial head of the entire church. While the Anglican Church receives no direct monetary support from public taxes, it’s canon law places it beneath the authority of the Monarch who is “…the highest power under God in this kingdom…” 

In the United States, however, we have a secular political mechanism. One that does not acknowledge a state religion of any kind. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits any law that would establish such a church, or for the law to make the practice of faith illegal. As a Baptist, I know of the historical struggle my faith tradition has had with state churches. The first Baptists in England were imprisoned, some of them dying there, by the Church of England during the 17th century. In the American Colonies, before the Revolution, Baptists were run out of the Massachusetts Colony by the Puritans because they did not adhere to the official religion of that colony. Our country has a different relationship to Christianity than the UK. 

It is because of that checkered history of faith-sponsored violence that I am uncomfortable with the term “Christian Nation” being ascribed to the US. As we look around today at a political system where a racist, fascist, mysoginistc, demagogue draws huge support from a group who would like to proudly trumpet their Christian faith, I would like to make it known that I don’t want a “Christian Nation” here. Not if it is going to look like that.