Subversive pastors...

Eugene Peterson writes in The Contemplative Pastor:  "There are not many hours in any day when I am not faced with the struggle of faith in someone or another, the deep, central eternal energies that make the difference between a life lived to the glory of God and a life wasted in self-indulgence or trivialized in diversions... For me, that is what it means to be a pastor: to be in touch the the Lord's word and presence, and to be ready to speak and act out of the Word and presence in whatever I am doing - while leading you in worship, teaching Scripture, talking and praying with you individually, meeting with you in groups as we order our common life, writing poems or articles or books."

I resonate with this challenge in the most profound way.  I have also discovered another of Peterson's truths (first articulated by Jesus) that this ministry is fundamentally subversive.  I have not met many people who have said to me:  my life is empty I am ready for a radical change - or - I know I have wasted most of my days so what can I do to take me in a different direction?  Right?  Most of the time people carp about minor changes I make to the morning liturgy or an inclusive language tweak to the Lord's Prayer.  Or they complain that their lives are so burdened and pained that no one can understand them - especially me.  Sometimes they tell me:  I'm too busy to deal with my faith in an overt way - I have a demanding job, demanding children, demanding schedules - so can't you just make it simple?  And sometimes - rarely but sometimes - some body will be honest enough to say something like:  you know, mostly I am just bored and sick and tired.

That is to say, very few people start off by saying they are empty - or in a spiritual rut - or confused - or hurt or angry with the way their life is turning out and eager for God's help.  In fact, they almost never put it in terms of faith.  Rather, it is someone else's fault - or the unfairness of circumstances beyond their control - or some cosmic mystery.  Now I've known boredom - and sloth and lust and all the other deadly sins, too - and I've done my share of blaming be it my parents or society or capitalism or a broken church.  And I think there is a place for venting and pissing and moaning.  A former monk used to tell me, "Look, that's why the Lord invented happy hour!"  We all need to cut loose from time to time and just give shape and form to what we are feeling.

But there comes a point in time when a person of maturity - and faith - needs to learn what her/his feelings are telling them lest we keep on doing the same old same old and expecting different results.  Three of the most common traps I have encountered in my 30+ years of ministry might be summarized like this:

+ Rather than learn to go with the flow and hear what the Spirit of the Lord is saying to the church at any given moment in time - and make the necessary changes - we blame the culture.  We resent the fact that 1950 has come and gone and believe that if we simply did church - and family - and music - and government and everything else the way they were done in the "good ole days" everything would be better.  In the 12 step movement this is known as insanity because... if you always do what you've always done, then you'll always get what you've always got.  Holding on to the past and cursing the movement of time is one way some of us avoid our fears.  Rather than confess the terror of living in times when life changes so fast that no one knows what end is up - and reaching out to God in trust - we blame the world. Resentment becomes a type of negative spirituality and there is nothing redemptive, healing or useful about it.  Look, the world has always been the world, and it is always going to be the world, so why insist on so much blame?

+ Another way to avoid getting honest with God and self is to become addicted to own pain.  Not only do these folk sing, "nobody knows the troubles I've seen..." but they refuse to believe that Jesus has shared anything like their brokenness.  In this world, our pain is unique and one of a kind - even though religious people of wisdom have been exploring human tragedy for at least 4 thousand years - and have learned something about how our wounds can also become our teacher.  But no, when we're in this trap - adolescents in Peterson's jargon - we are certain that no one else has ever even heard of what we have experienced.  So, not only are we closed to any suggestions that the wisdom of the past might be useful, but we insist on revisiting our anguish until it is hard to know whether we are capable of letting go.  I trust by faith - and experience in therapy and 12 steps groups - that people born into the most ugly realities can also become children of God's light and joy, but it doesn't happen so long as we stay addicted to our agony and believe we are unique.

+ And third there is busyness - the contemporary curse that keeps us exhausted and distracted - while believing we are doing something of worth for our family, ourselves or the common good.  For the past 12 years, whenever people say to me, "Look, I know you are really busy..." I stop them and reply, "No, not really.  I have time to talk and listen..."  Most people don't believe me.  Busyness has become a badge of value.  Now, I don't have much patience for people who want to jerk my chain or waste my time. But I do have all the time in the world to listen and pray and go deeper.  So I insist that worship not be busy - that our meetings not be busy - that every week we try to practice taking a little time out to remind ourselves that we are God's beloved beyond ANYTHING we do.  And still some people resist - I know I did for decades - but it is true.

Well, these three ways of avoiding getting honest with ourselves and God are impossible to challenge head-on.  That's why Peterson (following the model of Jesus) insists on being subversive.  Our ministry is to quietly and patiently and consistently show the difference between the kingdom of self and the kingdom of God.  Over time I've come to use a lot of humor - some story telling - and tons of music to make this point over and over again.  And little by little, like a mustard seed some get it.  Not most and never all at once, but "peu en peu" as the French say.  Peterson writes:

Jesus was a master at subversion. Until the very end, everyone - including the disciples - called him Rabbi. Rabbis were important, but they didn't make things happen. On the occasions when suspicions were aroused that there might be more to him than that title accounted for, Jesus tried to keep it quiet - tell no one he said.  He favorite form of speech was the parable, a subversive style. Parable sound absolutely ordinary: casual stories about soil and seeds, meals and coins and sheep, bandits and victims, farmers and merchants. And they are wholly secular: of his forty or so parables recorded in the Gospels, only one has its setting in a church and only a couple mention the name of God... Jesus continually threw odd stories down alongside ordinary lives (para = alongside, bole = thrown) and then walked away without explanation or altar call... Parables aren't illustrations that make things easier; they make things harder by requiring the exercise of our imaginations, which if we aren't careful becomes the exercise of our faith.

Until I learned how to be a subversive pastor, I was approaching burn out.  I tried too hard - I pushed too hard - I demanded results rather than offer an invitation.  I believed I had to do all the work rather than trust God's Spirit.  And sometimes I still slip into my old sins and get cranky and resentful.  That's when it is time to take a break - go for a walk in the woods - or find a club with a hot jazz combo and just chill.  And here's the thing:  the more I chill - the more I trust God's subversive Spirit - the better things become.  I'm still not all that good at it but today I give thanks that I can rest and trust that God is God.

Small blessings: a safe place to be real

An interesting idea came to pass this afternoon:  about a year ago, one of our adult study groups read Jaco Hamman's A Play-full Life:  Slowing Down and Seeking Peace while another explored Parker Palmer's Healing the Heart of Democracy.  Both books suggested that one of the things a local congregation could do to advance the cause of peace was to hold a series of potlucks.  Churches already know how to do these really well - but there would be one change.  Rather than simply marking the season with a shared meal, each potluck would be dedicated to a theme - something that challenged us all to go deeper - with a guest presenter.  After a brief introduction, people would eat and discuss the theme of the day and share the highlights of their table talk.

I've been quietly pushing this idea for over a year and our first theme potluck took place right after this morning's worship.  Two local representatives from NAMI - National Alliance on Mental Illness (who are also members) - shared a little of their story and some resources.  Then the 25 people who gathered spent the next 45 minutes talking about how we might find new/old ways of breaking down the walls among us so that anyone who wanted would have a place at the table.  At the close, we shared a brief summary of our table talk.  Suggestions from the meal will be passed on to key ministries for implementation as the summer unfolds.  (For more information check them out @ http://www.nami.org/)

I was grateful for two things:  first, the number of people who stayed and participated at a deep level.  It was a stunning day after a long hot spell but we had a modest group of young and old people stay because they wanted to go deeper.  Second, some of our newest friends shared helpful insights with those of us who are now old-timers about ways we can become better at being an open and affirming church for all people.  It was humbling, but honest and very, very useful.

As in most things in life, today's potluck wasn't earth-shattering - but it was real.  And creating a safe place for deeper conversations about real things that matter is one of the time-tested ways people of faith grow and mature.  If things shake out well over the summer, I can see this changing the way we do Christian Formation for adults in the year to come.

Something else touched me today, too.  A woman who worships with us regularly told me before worship that as a child she would often play by literally saying parts of the Roman Catholic liturgy in Latin as she distributed Eucharist to her dolls.  (I think I got that part right...) We smiled but she continued saying, "So imagine my joy at realizing that today I was assigned to share the invitation to the Lord's Table in this morning's liturgy!"  The gifts of God for the whole people of God, indeed!

One more thing: by week's end, three different people had made a point of setting up a meeting with me to talk about deepening their commitment to our faith community. Church renewal in this era is NOT about marketing, nor is it about closing the deal or anything else but relationships.  I am grateful that over time, these folk have seen something in the community that draws them back even when we are less than attentive. Tonight I give thanks for the way the face of Jesus keeps showing up among us in the most unexpected ways...

credits
1) allenandrebeccapruitt.blogspot.com
2) www.fanpop.com
3) www.blessedisthekingdom.com
 

Truth telling in a sentimental culture...

Last night we saw Sarah Polley's new film, "The Stories We Tell," a brilliant and creative documentary exploring her family's most personal narratives and how they have shaped her life.  When I got home, I read and then listened to President Obama's intimate reflections on what the Zimmerman acquittal means to him - and many in the African-American community - based upon his own experience of growing up while black in the US.  And at the end of the day, I kept thinking:  what a challenging and creative juxtaposition?

Both Polley and the President are careful, nuanced thinkers. Polley's film is a stunning record of the unreliability of memory in our quest for truth.  Peter Bradshaw, film critic for The Guardian, writes:

Stories We Tell is a cine-memoir of Polley's parents, the British-born actor Michael Polley and Canadian actor and casting director Diane Polley. Using Super-8 home-movie footage, faux Super-8 reconstructions, interviews with siblings and, crucially, a memoir written by Michael, Polley has created a portrait of a marriage that is full of enormous richness, tenderness and emotional complexity. Polley tackles painful issues with candour and tact. She has a gripping tale to tell. It's a film that raises questions about the ownership of memory and ownership of narrative... It is a work of some audacity, even effrontery, mixing pastiche Super 8 footage and faux home movies in with her genuine archive material, avowedly because the film is about the unreliability of memory and the consequent importance of democratising personal histories, allowing everyone to tell their stories and give their view.  (see more @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/ filmblog/2013/jun/28/sarah-polley-stories-we-tell-film)

The President's confessional comments point to some of the ways the personal connects all of us to what is political - particulary when it comes to social oppression. In this morning's NY Times, the lead editorial noted that: President Obama did something Friday that he hardly ever does — and no other president could ever have done. He addressed the racial fault lines in the country by laying bare his personal anguish and experience in an effort to help white Americans understand why African-Americans reacted with frustration and anger to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of Trayvon Martin. With clarity and compassion, he spoke of three private experiences that are all too common for black men in the United States.

There are, frankly, very few African-American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. There are very few African-Americans who haven't had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often. And I don't want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida... Trayvon Martin could have been me thirty five years ago.

As I took in both Polley's and the President's stories, I was struck by the importance both individuals gave to naming the broader context of time and culture that has shaped their stories - and the role others have played in helping them name the truth.  And while they refused to be dogmatic about the implications of their own experiences, they were clear that these experiences have shaped them in life-changing ways, too.

Truth telling is hard - especially in a sentimental culture.  I am grateful for artists like Sarah Polley - and deeply humbled and proud of my President - for finding ways of bringing heart, soul, body and mind together in public for the common good.  Thanks be to God.

credit:
1)theylaughedatjulesverne.com

Thank you to chris hedges and alice walker...

While we were away in Montreal (and Ottawa) earlier this summer, I picked up two very different books:  The World Will Follow Joy (Turning Madness into Flowers) by Alice Walker and Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges.  Both are prophetic, both are two although one is as different from the other as night is from day.

Hedges, some may know, is the Harvard Divinity School alum turned reporter who spent 20 years as a war correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, the Balkans and Africa.  After a 2003 commencement address at Rockford College in which he said, "We are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security," his employers at the NY Times urged him to cool his jets re: future anti-war rhetoric pertaining to Iraq. Soon thereafter Hedges left the paper.  Currently he writes a weekly column for TruthDig.com (check him out @ http://www. truthdig.com/report/category/hedges/) and serves as a Senior Fellow at The Nation Institute (see http://www.nationinstitute.org/)  His books about the personal and social consequences of war - War is the Force that Gives Us Meaning and What Every Person Should Know about War - are a jarring and biting indictment of the America's addiction to violence.  His current writing about environmental disaster, the erosion of dissent in post September 11th America and the corruption of social institutions by capital are bleak and all too true.

Alice Walker is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar and 22 other novels, collections of poetry and children's books. She is the first African American woman to have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction.  Her advocacy for the rights of all living beings is filled with wisdom and compassion - as is her commitment to radical healing and hope.  Recently she wrote about the murder of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman like this: "So many murders of black men in my lifetime. The physical shock is astounding. I write this remembering that when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968 the shock to my system was so severe that I lost the child I was carrying."  (check out more @ http://alicewalkersgarden. com/2013/07/thoughts-on-our-sorrow-trayvon-martin-and-troy-davis/) Her wisdom and solidarity with the wounded of the world are inspirational and every bit as true as the words of Hedges.

Both Hedges and Walker are essential for me to stay grounded in the truth of the hour (with a healthy dose of Jesus, Ed Hays, Eugene Peterson, Kathleen Norris and Richard Rohr thrown in for good measure, too.)  Hedges refuses to pull his punches - and serves no master other than the quest for reality. 

The disparity between what we are told or what we believe about war and war itself is so vast that those who come back are often rendered speechless. What do you say to those who advocate war as an instrument to liberated the women of Afghanistan or bring democracy to Iraq? How do you tell them what war is like? How do you explain that the very proposition of war as an instrument of virtue is absurd? How do you cope with memories of small, terrified children bleeding to death with bits of iron fragments peppered through their small bodies,? How do you speak of war without tears?  (Death of the Liberal Class, p. 58)

Walker is equally sober even when she articulates a hope born of the ashes of our suffering.

What makes the Dalai Lama
Lovable?

His posture
From so many years
Holding his robe with one hand
Is odd.

His gait
Also.

One's own body
Aches
Witnessing
The sloping
Shoulders
& Angled
Neck;

One hopes
He attends
Yoga class
Or does Yoga
On his own
As part
Of prayer.

He smiles
As he bows
To everything:
Accepting
The heavy
Burdens
Of
This earth;

Its
Toxic
Evils
& Prolific
Insults.

Even so,
He sleeps
Through
The night
Like a child
Because
Thank goodness
That is something
Else
Daylong
Meditation
Assures.

You could cry
Yourself to sleep
On his behalf
& He
Has done that
Too.

Life
Has been
A great
Endless
Tearing away
For
Him.

From
Mother, Father, Siblings, Country, Home.
And yet
Clearly
His mother
Loved him...
...............

That is not all
They see.

They see our suffering;
Our striving
To find
The right path;
The one with heart
We may only
Have heard about.

The Dalai Lama is Cool
A modern word
For
"Divine"
Because he wants
Only
Our collective
Health
& Happiness.

That's it!

What makes
Him
Lovable
Is
His holiness.

Every week I find I need to spend time with hard, true and unsentimental reflection on the agony of this world - and you can't get better than Hedges.  I also need moments of beauty and humility in poetry and music - and Walker is one who finds ways to lift my spirit even in sorrow.  What do you do to feed your soul?  Nourish and cultivate the practices of reverence?  Rest in both the sorrow and the celebrations?  Please tell me...

What DOES the church have that is useful?

Last night at church council we had a challenging conversation about why people don't go to worship.  One member said, "I recently invited a colleague to join me at church and was told, 'I can't see that the church has one thing to offer me that I would want.'"  After a silence, he added, "You can just imagine how quickly that brought our conversation to a close."  For us as church leaders, however, this just got things rolling in a lively way for we wrestle with this reality everyday and consider its implications.  A few random reactions:

+ First, this young man was right:  not only do we as a church not have things that are obviously useful and valuable to him as a consumer, but as an institution we have a whole lot of baggage that NOBODY wants to be associated with anymore.  None of us want the taint of ignored and quietly sanctioned pedophilia.  No group of modern people working two jobs wants to support a bloated and irrelevant bureaucracy.  No thinking person can abide the literal biblicism that so often dominates the public realm.  And nobody I know can support the cruel moral judgments that have denigrated and defiled our LGBTQ sisters and brothers.  Let's face it, the church looks like a mess - and in many ways is even worse in person than it appears - so what smart, young hipster or middle aged thinking person would find anything attractive within and among us?  As a product, we leave a lot to be desired.

+ Second, this broken down body of Christ, however, just might finally be wounded enough to be free to become the church rather than a "vaguely therapeutic institution."  In his lengthy reflection on the spiritual wisdom born of recovery and addiction, Thirst, Jim Nelson notes that one of the most important New Testament insights is that in Jesus even God has chosen to quit acting like God. In Christ the sacred comes to us in our wounds - in our brokenness - in our failures and offers grace not judgment.  What a blessing for those of us who own our wounds, brokenness and failures.  Not only does God come to be with us, but God nourishes us when we are down so low it can only look like up, feeding us with love, hope and new life.  But here's the rub:  this blessing is only experience from the bottom looking up.  Those who still harbor an illusion of control, don't get it - and while that's good news for the least of us as sisters and brothers - this not such good news for young people striving to stake their claim on the world.  And it is especially unattractive if they are looking at church like one more commodity to be purchased or used.

+ Third, the vaguely therapeutic liberal Protestant church has not had much fire in the belly for at least 50 years or more - and we don't have much practice pointing out how the distilled wisdom of humanity in our Bible can be useful even in the 21st century.  That's what I hear young families telling me when I ask, "What do you need on Sunday morning?"  Most say, we need a time to be spiritually fed AND a time to learn how to use the wisdom of the scriptures in our everyday life.  To be blunt, we haven't done such a good job of talking about the wisdom of the Bible in useful ways.  For too many generations we haven't nurtured silence and awe, beauty and reverence, trust and clarity in worship either.  So, young consumers are right when they tell us:  I really can't see even one thing that the church could offer me that I might want.

So, what DOES the church offer that others in this - or any other - generation might want?  For me, the church offers at least these seven things: 

1) A physical place and a fixed point in time to practice reverence and learn the habits necessary to reclaim a sense of the sacred within the ordinary.

2) A set of clear moral guidelines based upon 4,000 years of compassion in community that can help families of all types mature with integrity.

3) A commitment to human well-being over greed.  This is a counter-culture value that is not addicted to the bottom line nor the waste of consumerism; it offers caring people an alternative to life styles driven by stress and performance metrics.

4) A worldview that begins with love not chaos, avarice or ambiguity.  We are defined by grace and posses the time-tested practices necessary to nourish a love-shaped life.

5) A community that is safe, humble and small - nothing too grand nor bigger than life - just real people in a user-friendly environment dedicated to becoming a little more gentle and real at the close of each day. I think of Psalm 131

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvellous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.

6) An order to each day, week and season that helps us know that life is NOT all about me:  ours is an other-centered existence where we rub shoulders with people we don't like but treat with kindness, a collection of people who would not ordinarily gather together but are now committed to one another in love, a community that is not segregated by age, race or gender no matter how inefficient that seems to the world.

7) A center that practices group singing - and sharing our resources - and listening - and honoring the dignity of every living being.

Recently Fr. Richard Rohr wrote the following that captures the best of what a wounded, all-too human church looks like and has to offer our obsessive culture:

The sin warned against at the very beginning of the Bible is “to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:17). It does not sound like that should be a sin at all, does it? But the moment I sit on my throne, where I know with certitude who the good guys and the bad guys are, then I’m capable of great evil—while not thinking of it as evil! I have eaten of a dangerous tree, according to the Bible. Don’t judge, don’t label, don’t rush to judgment. You don’t usually know other people’s real motives or intentions. You hardly know your own.

The author of the classic book The Cloud of Unknowing says that first you have to enter into “the cloud of forgetting.” Forget all your certitudes, all your labels, all your explanations, whereby you’ve put this person in this box, this group is going to heaven, this race is superior to that race. Just forget it. It’s largely a waste of time. It’s usually your ego projecting itself, announcing itself, and protecting itself. It has little to do with objective reality or real love of the truth. If the world and the world’s religions do not learn this kind of humility and patience very soon, I think we’re in historical trouble.

I believe THIS is something invaluable and useful for times such as our own.

The paradox of discipleship...

NOTE:  Here are my worship notes for this coming Sunday, July 21, 2013.  I am

grateful for the insights of David Lose at Working Preacher for the introduction - and my bandmates at First Church for their commitment to beauty, integrity and solidarity in song and soul.

Introduction

In a world as full, busy, over-committed and stressed as our own – an era that is ripe with both opportunities and obligations – it is almost inevitable that there will be times when we will feel stretched to the point of snapping.  And because we all have important things to accomplish, I thought it might be useful to try something out of the box this morning:

·      So what I’d like you to do is take a moment right now to recall the top five things that you believe are essential to accomplish next week – the top five tasks or commitments that you most need or want to get done in the coming week – the really big ones, ok?

·      I’m not going to ask you to say them out loud or anything, just take the time to zero in on the top five things you most need to get done and actually write them down so you can see them.  Are you with me:  can you make a list of your top five?   

Now once you have this list, I’d like you to do two things with it:

·      First, try to rank your top five most important things to get accomplished next week from 1 to 10 according to what is genuinely essential.  Think of it like this:  rate your pressing commitments according to the consequences that will happen if you do not complete something – who will be affected – what will change or happen if it doesn’t get done? (David Lose, workingpreacher.com)   

·      And second, knowing that you have your list of essential commitments in hand, try to assign a value to this:  how important is it next week for you to hear – and know – that you are loved by God and valued as beloved?  Not for all the things you do, but just for being you?  “Or maybe you could think about how much you would want those closest to you – your children, siblings, best friends – to hear and know how much they are loved and valued just for who they are – not for what they do either – but just for being their own sweet selves?” (Lose @ workingpreacher.com)  How important – from 1 to 10 – is that?

What did you discover – or experience – in this experiment?  For me it didn’t take away any of the things I need to accomplish – I still have work to do, people to visit and tasks to complete – but it helped me realize what else I need to factor into this week:  taking time to feel and know that I am God’s beloved.  And letting those I love know I love them dearly, too.

That is what is at the heart of today’s story of Mary and Martha – learning and practicing how to live in balance with God’s grace -  rather than getting caught up as the story says in worry and distraction.  And what a useful gift this knowledge and practice can be, don’t you think?  So let me share a few insights with you that I found valuable from this scripture and then we’ll talk about why it matters.

Insights

You might recall from last week that I mentioned it is helpful when making sense of a particular Bible story to place it within the bigger story of each gospel.  And this is true in spades when we look at what Luke was trying to communicate to us in the story of Mary and Martha because it comes right after the parable of the Good Samaritan.

In that lesson, the emphasis is on doing – go and live as a neighbor to the world – Jesus even concludes the story by saying:  go and do this wherever you are.  In the Mary and Martha story, however, one of the things Jesus emphasizes is not doing – only one thing is required, he says, and that is to rest and reflect like Mary at the feet of the Lord.  So what is it – what’s going on?

 

·      Remember both stories take place just after Jesus has announced that he must go to Jerusalem to face the Cross and die – which is a not so subtle clue that the stakes have gone up here - so we really need to pay attention if we’re going to make sense of he wants us to know – especially because it all sounds so paradoxical.

·      So what does the context of this story tell you about living into the rhythm of God’s grace when held in tension with the Good Samaritan story?  Could it have something to do with the wisdom expressed in the Hebrew Bible as “to everything having a season?”  How does Ecclesiastes 3 put it? 

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

It seems to me that one of the useful insights from this text and its context has to do with balance – sometimes we’re in a time for doing and sometimes we’re not – sometimes we need to rest and sometimes we need to act – sometimes we need to speak and sometimes all that is needed is silence.  And a healthy and holy life is NEVER about just one or the other time but how they all fit together in balance with one another. 

·      So based upon our opening list, how goes it for you:  do you have a life that is balanced between doing and resting?  Acting in useful and loving ways and letting yourself be nourished by God’s love and grace?

·       What gets in the way of being balanced for you?

Now here’s where I think the story of Mary and Martha cuts deep because it gives us two more clues about how to live in balance.  First, let’s get this out of the way:  I think we need to say that BOTH Mary AND Martha are essential in our lives, right?  One is not better than the other – and both are essential to us as individuals, congregations and communities.  Think about it:

·      While Mary sat at the Master’s feet in study and reflection, what was Martha doing?  She was preparing food – she was practicing hospitality – a time honored spiritual commitment that is absolutely essential for everyone’s well-being, right?

·       What’s more, caring and feeding a guest was believed to be a form of physical or embodied prayer.  Think back to the Old Testament story this morning of Abraham and Sarah and the angels who came disguised as a guest:  what was the first thing to happen in this story but that Sarah went to the kitchen and started to prepare some food.  To be generous and intentional about your hospitality was a spiritual commitment that ran deep in the spirituality of Israel.

So much so that we are told in Hebrews 13:  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.  For when Abraham and Sarah extended hospitality to a stranger, they experienced communion with one of the Lord’s angels.  In our text, Martha is performing a profound spiritual discipline by fixing a mmfortable place.

·      When it comes to balance, Mary isn’t better than Martha – both are important – and we need them both.  So let me ask you, who do you favor or resemble more at your core:  Mary or Martha? 

·      People are different, right?  And some of us are intuitive by nature and some of us seek a more extroverted way of being; some of us tend more towards contemplation and quiet while others are clearly more action oriented.  So how goes it for you?  At your core, who are you more like:  Mary or Martha?

Knowing and honoring this can be useful in creating balance:  that’s one insight.  Another is this:  based upon the words of the Bible it appears that Jesus scolds Martha for not resting and listening.  And that is how this story is usually taught:  Mary is better because she sits and listens.  But here’s what I think is really going on when he says “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things and in this moment there is only one thing that is needed.” 

He is NOT chiding her for being busy or offering hospitality, but rather for being worried and distracted while DOING the work of caring and feeding.  Do you grasp the difference? Offering hospitality is a beautiful thing – and if you are single minded about it – making supper can be a prayer – a way of expressing love and compassion.  I’ve experienced that sometimes just setting a table:  knowing how the beauty of the meal will turn something simple into a feast for those I love is a joy for me and I want to do it.

I’ve also known the opposite, too – resenting or worrying about my food or house cleaning until I’m a wreck – and I think THIS is what Jesus was concerned about:  Martha was so distracted by the tasks and chores, that she wasn’t really present.  As the text says she was worried and distracted… so much so that she forgot that Jesus was preparing to head into Jerusalem to face his passion and the Cross. 

Not only was she so distracted that she wasn’t able to listen to her guest, but she totally forgot what he was getting ready to endure.  In this, her commitment to hospitality became part of the sickness rather than the cure.

·      What do you think about that:  is any of it valuable? 

·      Will it make any difference in how you prioritize your commitments next week?

Conclusion

If the wisdom of Scripture – and the practices of Sunday morning – isn’t useful, we should just give up on the Church and stay at home on Sunday morning.  If, however, they can help us live a more balanced and compassionate life, then they are a gift from God filled with truth and grace.  Let’s see how it goes this week, ok and we’ll check back in on the next Sabbath?

Living in the tension...

It was awesome to be back in worship this morning with my faith community in Pittsfield:  grounded, gentle, open, deep and humorous all at the same time. Being with my man C - the BEST music guy EVER - made my heart sing.  And after we spoke about the parable of the Good Samaritan - and the Trayvon Martin case was always looming just beyond our thoughts and words - we gathered in the chancel for Eucharist.  Most of us love sharing Holy Communion in this way - 100 people clumped together around the table receiving and serving the bread and cup in a simple but generous way - it was beautiful.

I return thanks this day for faith communities that are soul food for one another.  In the midst of so much brokenness and pain, we not only need one another to be the Body of Christ, we need one another to keep our feet firmly planted on the big truths.  For a short time we were truly Black and White, young and old, gay and straight, rich and poor, women and men together in grace.  It didn't last forever, but it was a foretaste of what God wants for our everyday realities.

Here's a clip from an American comic genius. Louis CK, that deserves to be seen at this moment in time.


Here's a tune by the Boss that also cuts to the chase and needs to be reheard over and over:



Tonight there are people calling for the justice department to look into Trayvon's death.  Our sisters and brothers in Turkey and Egypt are wrestling with a whole other host of problems as they search for ways to live together in harmony and diversity.  There is a profound tension to living in these times, yes? 

Here a few good links to add some perspective:

+ SALT @ http://www.saltproject.org/salt-blog/not-guilty.html

+ Susan Thisltethwaite @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/07/14/for-trayvon-martin-is-there-no-justice/

Why not jazz that meets REAL human needs...

Jazz critic, Ted Gioia, wrote this in part of his reflection on the place of avant-garde jazz in our contemporary era: avante-gard

We require nothing less than a new cultural context for music-making in general - and jazz in particular.  So let me suggest one: why not take art down from its pedestal and ask it to meet real human needs - indeed, the full gamut of human needs from escapism to spiritual transformation, from personal joy to communal solidarity, from the thrill of victory to the agony of defeat, etc. I would suggest that a jazz world that valued these human ideals, instead of quasi-scientific concepts, would look much different - and much better - from the one we see today. (The Future of Jazz p. 170)

And two things strike me about Gioia's insight:

+ First, he articulates a deep purpose for art - one that cuts deeper than the modern and romantic ideals that have shaped Western art for the past three hundred years - and locates value beyond abstractions.  Bruce Ellis Benson has noted that the current ideology of art not only transforms the artist into a demi-god - the genius of Kant's world - who is uniquely able to see beyond the limits of mundane existence into something more lofty, but also disconnects the artist from human community.

The genius myth has promoted the idea of the artist as some sort of 'lone creator' who neither needs nor wants the influence of or interaction with others: in this the artist is off alone in a garret.  Augosto Boal speaks of the 'solitary author locked in his study, to whom divine inspiration dictated a finished text...' some, like composer George Bizet, have gone so far as to say that 'Beethoven is not a human, he is a god...' or one of the chosen people. (Liturgy as a Way of Life, pp. 57-58)

But such abstract nonsense is not only idolatrous and isolating for the artist, it removes the social context for creating art so that works of art become objects created essentially for the artist alone. Bach, who understood himself as more of a craftsman rather than an aloof aesthete, created (and improvised) beautiful music for the glory of God in the context of worship.  Messiaen did much the same.  And Coltrane's later works - and the extended avant-garde improvisations of his last years - were all shared in the hope that he might give to others the sacred sound that saved his life from addiction and alienation.

+ Second, Gioia wants an art that is transformative rather than fetishized. Go in to any high culture concert hall or museum and you will find an environment that has become more reverent than most sanctuaries or synagogues.  Why?  Johann Gottfried Herder in 1800 hit the nail right on the head: "art was no longer an aid to religion, it was religion's replacement."

Music was set free when it was shown religious awe... (and this awe) suggest the kind of religious reverence and veneration one might show a holy object... (In this) Herder transfers religious expectation onto aesthetic objects... Put bluntly, art took of, almost wholly intact, many of the behavioral expectations of religious experience and worship... It was no accident that concert halls tended to be decorated with the busts or at least the names of the demigods of classical music, giving them the feel of a musical pantheon. What a concert hall provides is a hallowed space that calls for silence... the same could be said of behavior in art museums: even today, one can often feel a kind of devout reverence when one visits them. (Benson, pp. 68-9)

Last week columnist David Brooks wrote about Charles Taylor's masterwork: The Secular Society.  He makes two observations that relate to Gioia's call for art that meets human needs. 

+ First, freed from the negative constraints of religion, contemporary people are free to become fully engaged with life. Acts of compassion and justice, as well as creativity, are born of conscious commitment rather than fear and dogma. To be sure, there are down sides to this as experienced in unbridled greed or even existential doubt.  But mostly the movement towards secularism has been liberating as it invites each person to be fully engaged with life.

+ And second, most people realize that even without participation in a formal religion, they cannot exist with meaning and zest without some connection to the transcendent. 

People are now able to pursue fullness in an amazing diversity of different ways. But Taylor observes a general pattern. They tend not to want to live in a world closed off from the transcendent, reliant exclusively on the material world. We are not, Taylor suggests, sliding toward pure materialism. We are, instead, moving toward what he calls a galloping spiritual pluralism. People in search of fullness are able to harvest the intellectual, cultural and spiritual gains of the past 500 years. Poetry and music can alert people to the realms beyond the ordinary. 
      

Orthodox believers now live with a different tension: how to combine the masterpieces of humanism with the central mysteries of their own faiths. This pluralism can produce fragmentations and shallow options, and Taylor can eviscerate them, but, over all, this secular age beats the conformity and stultification of the age of fundamentalism, and it allows for magnificent spiritual achievement. (see http://www.nytimes.com/ 2013/07/09/opinion/brooks-the-secular-society.html?ref=davidbrooks&_r=0)

And here is where I see the "calling" of the artist becoming sacred in the most "secular" way: we can create artistic experiences that both nourish and celebrate the common good while also inviting individuals to probe more deeply into the questions that often ache just below the surface. We can create safe places to reconnect with transcendent beyond any and all expectations. We can share works of creativity that bring the depths of our emotions to the surface and even point towards some of the ways people wiser than ourselves have explored spiritual rest.

To me this would be "soul music" at its best - grounded in community, beauty and truth - and shared in the quest for common ground and/or spiritual integrity. This type of artistic searching is neither isolated nor aloof - and while it may still be out of the box for some - heretics often become the saints of the next generation.  Context, community and the common good along side truth and beauty are the key ingredients necesarry but all too often missing from contemporary art - jazz included.

NOTE:  After taking the puppy for a walk, a nagging thought kept returning that I want to address for people of faith as well as artists without any interest in religion. I am NOT proposing a type of evangelism disguised by music or any of the arts.  Rather, I am suggesting that artists and people of faith explore how creativity can lead to common ground. Specifically, our longing for the transcendent can create new partnerships.

About a month ago, for example, we hosted a secular jazz pianist in cooperation with Berkshire Jazz (check them out @ http://berkshiresjazz.org/) Chris played a stunning concert that lifted spirits with nuance, verve and humor. Period.  It was a thoroughly satisfying evening of jazz and classical piano that also raised funds for our local hunger ministry.

My interest in hosting this event was simple: 1) I wanted to parner as an ally with an artist who cared about strengthening the common good; 2) I wanted to utilize the space our building provides as a community resource on behalf of beauty, truth and love. It is a magnificent music hall that is also rich with history. It should be used by allies who are creative and care about the well being of our town.

After the gig, a number of people spoke about what a great place our Sanctuary was for doing music - one even proposed a partnership with regular events for young musicians.  We'll be talking as the summer ripens.  There is too little safe common space in contemporary America.  There is more mistrust than  creative cooperation.  And this church could play a small role in changing the status quo.
credits:
1) vvn.net
2) www.artglass-pottery.com
3) Ken Joslin @ artbyken.blogspot.com