Tag Archives: theology

July 17, 2012 · 11:23 am

Mystery Worship Eleven: A Missed Opportunity

Note:  this is part of an ongoing series.  Mystery Worship One is here;  Mystery Worship Two is here; Mystery Worship Three is here. Four is here. Five is here. Six is here. Seven is here. Eight is here. Nine is here. Ten is here.

On my first Sunday back in Texas, I decided to attend an Orthodox Church for my Mystery Worship time.

With some research for preparation, I discovered that the Orthodox Church considers itself the only true church, and is not in communion with other Christian groups.  Those who receive the sacrament of Holy Communion are expected to have made a confession in the presence of an Orthodox Priest within the last 24 hours and to come fasting to the service.

I read that worshippers stand throughout the entire, mostly sung, service (90 minutes to six hours in length), kiss icons (women do not wear lipstick), make multiple signs of the cross and engage in both bowing and acts of prostration.

Requested dress code:  slacks, dress shoes, collared shirt for men—and absolutely no hats—and long skirt or pants, modest blouse, minimal makeup, and head covering for women.

I woke on that morning in some discomfort, physical and mental. First, I had worked in the garden for seven hours the day before and had suffered a bit of heat exhaustion.  Second, during that sojourn in the garden, my unprotected feet disturbed a fire ant mound.  Bites everywhere, still tender, and I dreaded the  idea of even the lightest of shoes and a long time on my feet. Third, the thought of going to a worship service where I had little idea of what would happen suddenly seemed overwhelming to me. I feared standing out, looking like an idiot, disturbing the worship of others, and being physically miserable.

Nonetheless, I rose, dressed in a long black skirt and long sleeved blouse, and stuck my bite-covered feet into normally comfortable sandals.

At the appointed time, I left the house, drove to the location I had pinpointed, looked at the people outside, and realized something:  I had forgotten a head covering and had nothing in my car I could use.

The barriers to worship simply became too high for me. Discouraged, and feeling completely worn out, I headed home.

On that return trip, I began to think about what it is like for anyone to come into worship for the first time. The mysteries of worship services, language, customs and etiquette stay nearly indecipherable to many.

Traditional church bulletins are littered with headings like “prelude, doxology, Gloria Patri, benediction.”  We toss around buzz words such as Sacrament, liturgy, soteriology, ecclesiology, sanctification, salvation, atonement, justification, pre-lapsarianism (OK, that one is just for show).

I thought about how much planning it took for me to attend worship during my weeks away. Most places meant either a long walk or a need to catch a train, underground and then more walking to get to the places I wanted to go.

I didn’t know anyone at any place I visited.  I walked in and out a stranger, mostly by my own design.

While worship must not be about our own comfort, it also takes place within a community. Often, but not always, powerful worship takes place as part of a connection of people who know each other, care for each other, push one another to greater godliness, and actively work together to serve the world

I knew that, had I been walking into a known community that Sunday, I would have just laughed off my forgetfulness, ignored my bitten feet, borrowed what I needed, and freely headed in.  But as a strange sojourner, I feared that I might be judged and found wanting, and so stayed away.  It was my problem.

I’ve heard many people say, “I’ll go to church when I get my life together.”  I believe it actually works just the opposite:  the act of worship, of being willing to be touched by God, of engaging in the power of confession, forgiveness, reconciliation, thanksgiving—these are the very things that make it possible for us to get our lives together.

I know I missed something important that day.

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May 18, 2012 · 5:28 am

More on Sexuality, Acceptability and the Church

Here is a good, and a little bit funny, article on the nature of “biblical” marriages.  If you don’t want to read the whole article, here’s how the author sums up the nature of “traditional” marriages with a biblical foundation:

Traditional marriage is one man with multiple wives, multiple concubines, wives conquered in war and wives acquired in levirate marriage, possibly including girls under the age of ten, but definitely not including anyone of a different ethnic group, in an arranged marriage with disposition of property as its purpose. That seems very different from “one man, one woman,” does it not?

This goes to my contention that most people really don’t know very much about what the Bible does say about a lot of topics, including slavery (very much affirmed), role of women in church and society (pretty well denigrated), arranged marriages (pretty well the norm), polygamy (more than acceptable), rape (not really a problem–just marry her afterward and bring her along with the rest of the wives), nature of clothing (no blended fabrics acceptable), the nature of the priesthood (no lame, no sexually disfigured permitted), and a host of other things.  I’ve written more about some of those things here and here.

In one way or another, many of those practices and commands have been either conveniently ignored or explained away by taking a larger view of the overall message of the Bible.  I believe that overall message centers on two things: giving glory to God and acknowledging the redemptive work of Jesus Christ so we might live in reconciled intimacy with that Holy God.

The way we humans handle our sexuality must be addressed.  But questions and guidelines about the way we handle this part of our lives cannot serve as the final dividing line between deciding who is worthy of grace and who is not.

Where slavery is concerned, most people today take the larger view. Even though the practice is clearly affirmed and even encouraged in many places in the Bible, we say today something different.  We affirm that respect for all creatures stamped with the Imago Dei means we will not agree that one person gets to own another person, strip that person of basic rights, and use that person at will, discarding him or her when usefulness has ended.  Most Christians today are horrified to hear of ongoing practices of young girls sold into sexual slavery (happening all over the place) or people being put in concentration camps and stripped of all dignity (check out the book Escape from Camp 14--this is taking place right now in North Korea).  We take strong moral stands against such injustices.

When are we going to take the next strong moral stance against injustice?

I began to change my views of the legitimacy of same-sex attraction when I began doing some reading and study of those who are born “intersexed” or with ambiguous genitalia.  In a small percentage of births, it is impossible to say clearly, “it’s a boy” or “it’s a girl.”

I started asking myself, “Did God make a mistake with these children?”  ”Does God love them as much as God loves those who are more clearly defined sexually?”  ”Must someone born this way be barred from Christian leadership because we consider them fatally flawed and incapable of speaking as God’s mouthpieces?”

While those with SSA and the Intersexed are not the same, the questions that come up are the same.  When is someone a “mistake” or an “abomination” because of the way they are made?  Are only some people born in the Image of God? If so, what defines them?  For a long time, those few were much defined as male, with lighter skin, and property owners.  Everyone else was just a bit less, somehow sub-human.

So, I ask, “Is this a holy way to look at those who are different?”

I know I read the scriptures through the eyes of one who has generally felt left out of those who could be considered holy and acceptable before the Lord God.  I’m female and lefthanded.  Both of those factors have been suspect for generations.  The meaning of word “left” comes from the same Latin root, “sinestra” that the word “sinister” comes from. Left-handers have long been looked up as broken, wrong, just a bit evil. As for women . . . there are still many places in the world, including some places in the US supported by influential Christian denominations where women are very much excluded from the public square, from leadership, from positions of spiritual authority.

Who is right?  Who is wrong? Each side will argue its position by various biblical texts and theological pronouncements.  Often, each side condemns those on the other side to an eternity of separation from God.

And the world in need of grace walks by and says, “Well, it certainly can’t be found there.”

The church rightly has huge, huge issues with what is known as the “gay lifestyle” of unrestricted and wanton pursuit of sexual gratification.  Presumably, we also have huge, huge issues with the heterosexual pursuit of the same thing.  But only one of those concerns gets airing as “unholy” or “unacceptable.”   We need to refine our stance so that all of our sexual practices come under the exposing spotlight of the Holy One.

And remember, our call is to seek justice, act with kindness and mercy, and stay humble before our God.

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Filed under Bible, calling, gay marriage, grace, Imago Dei, injustice, Justice, kindness

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May 16, 2012 · 4:17 am

The Human Tendency: We Murder One Another Over the Details

Most of us can agree on major goals.  For the church, it is “Love God with all your heart, mind, strength and soul and love your neighbor as yourself” and “Make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” We can rally around those things with unity and purpose.

BUT . . . the moment we seek to determine the details in the “how” of doing those acts of love and the work of being and making disciples, our unity often dissolves into interminable, soul-destroying squabbling and even death.

So, we make rules.  We do it as a nation with our Constitutions, our national, state, and local regulations.  We do it as a church with our Book of Discipline, with our committee and votes, with Robert and his Rules of Order.

We need them.  We need guidelines and structure.  We need what I have often called “the boundaries to our playground” so we can find creativity within that space as well as safety.

Ideally, the older and more mature we grow, the larger our playground becomes.

Ideally, we ourselves become more and more trustworthy and we use our own trustworthiness to trust others.

Ideally, we gain greater and greater freedoms to explore, to learn, to grow as confidence in one another grows and we can lessen the number of rules that govern our lives.

Reality:  we layer law upon law, rule upon rule, restriction upon restriction because much of our experience of life has been littered with betrayal, broken trust, power plays, unchecked aggression, and the wanton disregard of others in our efforts to expand our own little fiefdoms.

In politics, business and the mafia, betrayals, power grabs, and aggression are winning plays.  But in the church, we really are expected to live by different rules.

And yet, as much as we try to do so, we find ourselves following the same path  Then we do what people have done from the beginning: look to the legal code to find the answers.  The more we look to the code, the more that code has to expand to answer every contingency, thwart every possible power play, provide in advance for every betrayal, and, if cleverly enough written, offer special privileges to a certain elite.

This is human history.  This is what we do.  This is what we are doing today.  This is, among other things, The United Methodist Church.  This is the Roman Catholic Church.  This is Sharia, Islamic religious law. This is the holiness code of Orthodox Judaism.  This is the world of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes and the Zealots.

This is the world that says, “My reality and opinion is the only reality that counts.  If yours is different from mine, then I must legislate yours out of existence. If that doesn’t work, then I must expel you from my community.”

This is the world I think Jesus broke into and said, “Whoa!!!!  You’ve missed the boat.  Again!”

I believe that God’s world is an extremely open place–but that is MY world.  Others completely disagree with me.  Years ago, I would have violently disagreed with me if I had known then what I am thinking now about theology, sexuality, the nature of God, the nature of the Holy Scriptures and the nature of the church. My internal world has changed radically over the years.

Forty years ago, I would have called the present “me” a heretic and demanded that the present “me” recant or be expelled.

Forty years ago, I would have burned the present “me” at the stake.

Forty years ago, I would have gone to holy war over those details because I just knew that I was right.

I still think I am right.  But my “rightness” is not the same as it was.  It is not the same as that of many of our African brothers and sisters in the faith.  It is not the same of my beloved husband, whom I love dearly and respect highly but with whom I disagree seriously over some major issues.  And we are both profoundly Christian, both United Methodist clergy and both have given our lives over to God.

At its best, that disagreement is held, nurtured, honored and covered by grace.  The wide umbrella of The United Methodist Church is our genius and our hope to actually live and offer that same grace to a world in desperate need of it.

At its worst, that disagreement leaves only room for one of us to live. The other must die.

At its worst, that disagreement says that those who recognize a spectrum of sexuality to be expressed within the bounds of holy covenant must be labeled as “non-biblical” or “heretics” or even “beastial” as I understood one delegate to General Conference affirmed.

At its worst, that disagreement means we write a book of rules so large, so thick, so indecipherable to the majority of the church that only the elite of the elite can decode it and make binding pronouncements about it.

At its worst, it means there will be only one person left standing when this fight is over:  the one with the biggest gun.

The song says, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”  Can we, and those with whom I so hugely disagree and who so hugely disagree with me, find peace without insisting the other change?  Can we possibly trust the redemptive movement of the Holy Spirit both in our lives and in the lives of others to bring us to perfection while, in our moving on to perfection state, we work side by side WITH our disagreements to do the will of God on earth as it is in heaven?

Can we?  I think so.  This does not mean we stop saying, writing, blogging, or tweeting what we think is true.  It does means we recognize that others just don’t think the same way.

It doesn’t mean we don’t have a rule book or organizational structure.  It does mean we work to raise trust and lower the amount of minutiae so we are freed for creativity and exploration and the explosion of grace that we need.

Let’s keep the conversations going and the doors open.  Let’s lay down our swords.  Seriously.  Everyone.  Put them down.  Quit demonizing the “other.”  Respect each other’s worlds and opinions.  Create a holy structure big enough for us all where we can live in holy connection.  Let us speak our truths freely.  Let us disagree with respect and honor.

I will say this one thing:  the church that refuses to “agree to disagree” over issues that are not central to our faith but where a significant minority disagrees with the majority position (like sexuality) is in serious danger of ringing its death bell. For some are clearly saying, “my way or the highway” and are sure they are speaking for God.  That is the big difference in my forty-year ago self and my current self:  I no longer say I speak for God with absolute certainty.  I still speak for God, for I am called to preach, but with great trepidation and humility because I have learned this well:  I just might very possibly be wrong.

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Filed under betrayal, Bible, calling, character, church, clergy, gay marriage, General Conference, grace

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March 20, 2012 · 10:35 am

In Heaven As It Is On Earth

I wish I could get it across that what Jesus lived and taught has almost no relationship with the “hate-ianity” that masquerades as Christianity across the press, airways and religious institutions today.

What should be a grace-infused, fully-life-giving, all-welcomed, heavenly-spaces-opened, mystery-explored, forgiveness and reconnection-enjoyed experience has turned into a “gotta hate gays, gotta vote republican, gotta be sure and send everyone who believes differently to eternal conscious torment” religious charade.

Now, the “gotta-hate” group makes better headlines. And the “gotta send everyone else to hell” mentality makes for tighter cohesive groups where if we are in, we are really in. A kind of emotional security many need comes with that.  The “gotta vote Republican” mindset makes it so much easier to skip the nuances and sub-texts of the political debates and positions, and just take the easier non-thinking stance where we vote as the loudest voices insist.

But, I ask, is this the way we want to live our lives? Is this what we hope eternity with God will look like?

I ask that last question because I suggest we are in the process of creating our own eternity.  Consider the story Jesus told in Luke 16 about the rich man who indulged himself all his life. In so doing, he cared not one bit about the poor one who sat at his gate, ill and barely surviving on food dropped from the rich man’s table. After both of their deaths, the rich man discovered that his eternity mirrored the hellish earthly life of the poor man whom he had ignored. The poor man found comfort and care in eternity denied to him before.

So I wonder . . if the way we live is primarily hateful and exclusive, will our eternity also be the same? After all, if God turns out to be the manifestation of perfect love that willingly gathers in those whom we’ve already deemed unacceptable, then the hate and exclusiveness embedded in our souls would make us loathe to enter a place filled with those we’ve despised so thoroughly.

Many pray daily or weekly (or at least everyone once in a while) these words: “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

The highest and happiest call of all is to do that kind of “God’s kingdom coming” living and working while on earth.

Assuming at some point you and I have prayed those words, “God’s kingdom come,” the way we live now reveals what we want that kingdom to be like.

Do we routinely denigrate or put down others in order to build up our own position?  Then the heaven we are creating will be a dog-eat-dog world.

Do we grab what we want when we want it without regard to the needs of others? If so, then our heaven will be a place of greed and selfishness.

Do we use anger and intimidation to get our way? Then we would best be prepared to be afraid, even terrified, when stepping into eternity, for fear will be our everlasting companion.

Do we think certain people groups are less worthy than we of privilege and basic human rights?  Then we may find ourselves stepped over and spat upon.

Do we find life adventurous and hopeful?  Then our vistas will expand even further.

Do we celebrate the achievements of others? Then we may enjoy the accolades ourselves.

Do we make into daily habits the practices of patience, kindness, and life-giving light? Then let’s get ready to walk into the light that transforms everything into perfection.

Are we delighted to give forgiving grace to others because we have delighted in receiving that from God?  Then we shall enter into the most transformational of all spaces where lightness of soul gives us an eternity to wander through the heart of God.

That’s what I’m hoping for—and need to live out now.

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