The Myth of Going Back

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was speaking with a friend about a book they read. I can’t remember it to save my life, but I remember the topic. The book talked about how different cultures view their heroes. What really struck my friend was how so many cultures carry the negative and the positive aspects of their heroes through the centuries; while Western culture tends to clean the heroes record to only show their positive aspects. It was a great topic of conversation about how we may be missing out on a lot of grace we could be sharing with each other because we only choose to see each other in distinct, separate categories of good and bad. 

That conversation happened before the events of this past week. At the time, we were having an intellectual exchange about how we view our mentors and heroes. In the aftermath of Baton Rouge, Falcon Crest, and Dallas, I’m seeing how this tendency to structure our society into zero-sum, either/or, good/bad categories makes it impossible to find a future. In the midst of it all, there is a theme being shared that is a myth, or maybe we should call it a lie, that there is a place we should get back to. It’s a statement that at one point in our past, these things were not problems, and so we should just go back tot he way things were. They way we used to respect one another, the way we used to believe in one another, the way it was when things made sense.

There is a real problem with that kind of statement, however. Aside from how this mode of thinking is so pessimistic of our future, or dismissive of progress, the idea that “we used to be better than this,” is just a lie. The truth is that we weren’t better. To say we were better erases our history, but forgetting our history is also not new to us. A history professor said, “Ninety Americans, ninety percent of the time, will forget what happened ninety seconds ago.” I tie this in with what I was saying at the beginning of the post. We wash and clean our history until our heroes are larger than life, and devoid of any flaw. We have done it for a long time, and it becomes visible the moment you try and bring it up.

The moment you bring the fact that we almost complete eliminated a people group from the face of the planet, (Native Americans) and that we should acknowledge our responsibility for that, you, “Hate America.”

If you acknowledge that people of color have been crying out against systemic injustice, such as police brutality, for centuries, you “Hate Cops.” 

It’s painful for us to remember that we were never perfect, because we have spent so many years constructing a narrative where we were. We glamorized the plight of western settlers to allow us to forget the struggle of Native Peoples. It’s easier that way. It makes for games we can play as children, and movies we can watch with ready conflict. We even told ourselves that we had already dealt with our radical conflicts. This way we could set them in historical pieces to be looked at under glass and held up as “how we used to be.” 

The truth is, there is no good place to go back to. We were never as good as we thought we were. America, including, and probably especially, the Church, was never as just as our ideals proclaim. We were never as free as our documents say we should be. We were never as equal as we declared we would be. The point is not that America once occupied a blessed place and all we have to do is go back to it. 

In truth, what we did was set a rather high bar, and we have been trying to live up to it ever since. We have become more just, more equal, more loving, but it’s always been a struggle. The struggle never stopped, it just changed. We went from working on one thing, to working on another. We tried to legislate against the racism that existed in law, but now we have to work on the racism that exists in our hearts. We have to contend with the violence that exists in our society, and we have to attend to the stories we are telling ourselves, looking for the lies. And we have to do all this, because we can’t go back.

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you,

and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, 

and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; 

through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you 

and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. 

Amen.

(Prayer from the Episcopal Church USA)

The Question I Haven't Been Able To Answer

When I was in seminary, I took this class, “The Minor Prophets,” for an upper level Old Testament credit. It was a great class as we studied and contextualized all twelve of the minor prophets. One day, we talked about the concept of justice as it is put forth by the different prophets, and tried to draw a picture of such justice being preached from the Church. Then, we watched the full video of MLK’s, “I Have A Dream” speech from the “March on Washington for Jobs.” It was the first time in my life I had watched the entire speech and heard all of the context around the events of that day.

I remember when it was over, I was deeply moved. In the conversation that followed among the class, I said, “I wish more ministers had the courage to preach like that.” The professor, ever the gracious soul, looked at me and said something I’ve struggled with ever since.

“Imagine it’s 1964, and you are a white pastor, in a white Baptist church, in Alabama. What do you do? Do you write the sermon about how the church needs to stop failing God and start welcoming and advocating for the African American community around you? Or do you start the long process of bend the arc of that congregation? Because if take the first course of action, you might as well write your resignation letter as well.”

This is a dilemma that I have been thinking about off and on ever since. There have been times in ministry where I tried for the prophetic voice, and it cost me a lot. Also, I have tried to take the pastoral approach and it eventually reached a positive outcome, but there were a lot of people hurt in the interim. How do we respond to this struggle? Is it truly a binary between being “prophetic” and being “pastoral?”

This week, I’m the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly. In the wake of recent events, LGBTQ inclusion has been at the center of a feeling of tension that is almost palpable at times. I know that amongst my generation of ministers, this topic carries a lot of weight as to how we see our future as part of the Fellowship. There is a distance between where we are and where some of us want to be, but how we get there and remain faithful to core of who we are as Cooperative Baptists is a struggle I don’t know if we have all taken into account.

I’m stuck in this place where I’m trying to answer that question. Is it better to be prophetic, or pastoral? I don’t want anymore hurt in the LGBTQ community because of things said or done by the CBF global organization, but there are also thousands of members with such different views that make this conversation very complex. I know that the Spirit will guide us to a bright future, but man, is it going to take faith to step out on that journey.

How We Have To Embrace Our Pain...

Photo courtesy of Trek Earth. Taken by gravatar.

In the aftermath of the horrible events in Orlando on Sunday, I’ve become aware of a potential problem for our future. The pain of the event is very real for what seems to be a large swath of our country. As we hear the stories of the survivors, learn about lives of the dead, and try to unearth the motivations of the shooter, opportunities to externalize our pain and anger are beginning to emerge. So much of the discussion of what has happened and how we might respond to it has shifted to focusing on the faith of Omar Mateen. Social media is awash with discussions about how “we have to name the evil of radical Islam,” or “we must respond to his act of international terrorism by ISIS.” 

I’m not an expert in international relations and so I’m sure our government must examine its choices concerning how to interact with the dangers from abroad. However, what about us? 

Is this external focus really helpful to our communal psyche?

As Christians, is focusing on a group within another of the world’s religions truly going to help us?

I remember coming home from church that day and speaking with a friend who is a member of the LGBT community. As we talked, it was obvious how much these events were effecting her. The pain and fear were clearly visible in her eyes, and as I hear from my other friends, I am aware of those same feelings in them. It has caused me to ask another question. 

How responsible are we, the American society, for this massacre?

I saw a meme that listed a number of injustices that have been suffered by the LGBT community  in America, and it was really painful to read. From the silence during the AIDS crisis of the 80s to the passing of HB2 in North Carolina, this community has suffered a lot of neglect at the hands of American society. And as a Christian, I have listened to, and at one time said, some hateful things about them. I carry guilt about that personally, and one of the things I feel most guilty about a statement to the effect, “I love gay people, but I don’t accept their sin.”

If God is going to punish people for their sins, and hates sin, as I was told growing up in church, then how are you going to love people despite of their sin?

Are you implying you are more loving than God?

While the collective conversation is shifting to describe the shooting as an international act of terrorism, I’m afraid for our future. As the church learns to externalize its pain by focusing it on some group over there, we neglect to see that we may have had some responsibility in this. Omar Mateen was an American citizen. He was born in Queens and not the Middle East. He spent his entire life interacting with and trying to immerse himself in American society. If he did fully identify with a radical religious element, which hasn’t been fully proven yet, then it would seem that he couldn’t find a place in the country where he was born. 

What does it say about American society that instead of feeling like a part of the whole, he decided to attack a group that has experienced so much pain?

How does our language about the LGBT community say about our understanding of God?

Could those two things have worked together?

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.