Thoughts after a short nap...

We held our annual church meeting today ~ it was good and honest and full ~ the best any group of real people might expect. It was affirming and humbling, it was challenging and cautious; and it was a great time to gather with the congregation and talk about our goals for the next year. I was both touched by the deep affection we share for one another and how carefully people speak about their differences. Believe me, I've been in meetings (elsewhere) where people say stupid and even cruel things during church meetings.

During worship I led a discussion into the theology of our mission statement:  we have been called to GATHER ~ WORSHIP ~ REFLECT ~ DO JUSTICE ~ AND SHARE COMPASSION.  We are a community ~ not spiritual tourists who show up when we want something ~ we are pilgrims called to learn about and love the Lord together. During the annual meeting, however, my comments became practical and strategic. We have four goals in 2012:

+ to strengthen and deepen worship

+ to find better ways of caring for the wounded and lonely in our community

+ to become allies with others in exploring the "slow living" movements that offer an alternative to our broken politics

+ to learn how to move through our days as joy-filled evangelists who are comfortable about inviting others to share in our emerging community of faith

Now each of these goals needs time, energy and enthusiasm to ripen. What's more, these goals need to be seen as one of the ways we give shape and form to our mission in the real world.  Our words must become flesh, yes?

Serendipitously, while digging through a pile of "to be read" books, I recently recovered Charles Lemert's, Why Niebuhr Matters. It is a brilliant summary of this great teacher's insights. And because Niebuhr has been one of my favorite American theologians, I found his careful analysis about love and justice in community and individuals as helpful and sobering as ever.  "Love, as such, does not lead to justice. We cannot live together without a justice that includes all with whom we might join to form a communal society based on fairness that requires sacrifice... Collective action towards justice is not a native-born gift. (In fact,)Human nautre desires neither community nor justice. And when we arrive collectively at any degree of justice, we arrive exhausted by the journey and bruised by the conflict." (p.98)

Three inter-related thoughts from Niebuhr come to mind as I relect on this meeting after a short afternoon nap. 

+ First, because liberal congreations do not want to acknowledge the clash between love and justice, more teaching and preaching on this theme is in order. Liberals like to believe that we can work our way through any and all problems.  But Niebuhr is clear that this is naive hubris that can become dangerous.  As he wrote in the Serenity Prayer, sometimes there are things that cannot be changed.  That is why we must always ask God for the "grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, the courage to change the things which should be changed and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other." 

Liberals are always aching for the happy ending - and sometimes it simply cannot take place - that is one truth of the Cross. Our work together is hard - sacrificial - and I suspect that I need to help our leadership team explore this truth more profoundly. I am not saying, of course, that our challenges cannot be changed; just that a little bit of Niebuhrian realism is always a good thing. Perhaps we will read Lembert's book as the new year unfolds.

+ Second, although the work of translating the love we know in our individual hearts into an authentic community of compassion and justice is hard, it is always built on a TON of joy.  Krister Stendhal once wrote, "Joy is closer to God than seriousness. Why? Because when I am serious I tend to be self-centered, but when I am joyful I tend to forget myself."  Thus, Niebuhr speaks of human history as ironic.  Not tragic, but ironic.

Human history is the irony that we know things we cannot do; we do things we are unwilling to think... so life is not tragedy but irony, which can be shocking even when it makes us laugh with a weirdly human sort of joy. (p. 211) Finances cause some of us to lose all perspective and make decisions based on fear. I heard some of that today as we discussed spending down the endowment.  There were even a few who confused part of the endowment with our ministry saying, "Well, when that money is gone we will have to close shop." 

No, no, no... our ministry - our calling - is not the endowment.  Our community of faith is not what is in the bank. The money can help, but we have been called to be more than a savings account - and while we may look differently if the money is depleted - that is ok, too.  Because joy is God's antidote to fear and self-centered seriousness, we must be certain to feed our hearts as this year unfolds.

+ And third, we need to be careful to work on all of this with humility and a sense of humor. We are going to get at LEAST as much wrong as we'll get right.  I know I will.  Like Niebuhr used to teach:  the human condition is always about knowing more than we can accomplish. "Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.”

What's more, as Paul taught in Romans 7, even when we can see the good we should do, we can't always pull it off.

I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

So after we spoke about our fears - and our hopes - our growth and our challenges - after we gave thanks to God for the very faithful leadership of our ministries: we affirmed an ambitious but honest budget and committed ourselves to living into these four goals. (We also noted that there is still close to 3/4 of a million dollars in other church acounts... so we approved getting a new copy machine, too because ours is over 10 years old!)

I closed the meeting with the words of St. Paul who said challenges and fear can make us weaker - or can create more room in our hearts and minds for the grace of the Lord to grow - so the time has come to decide:  We can boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,and hope does not disappoint us, because hope is God’s love being poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

And then I took a short nap!