Four Thoughts on Thoughtful Giving

"Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." 2 Corinthians 9:7

Well I don't know how it is in your house, but in our house, the blitz has begun...we are once again flooded with year-end requests for financial giving, from just about every non-profit we've ever supported. 'Tis the season of the perfect storm, where the spirit of giving in our hearts, meets the logistical reality of getting in those tax-deductible donations, meets the weird pseudo-guilt of realizing that you're going to have to make some space in that attic/garage/living room as a new wave of gifts finds its way under your evergreen of festiveness. It's giving time, and thank God for it. But it may also be time to do a gut-check on how and why to give. So without further ado, let's talk about a few principles of effective charitable giving.

1. With material donations, ALWAYS call first. So, during seminary, I managed the "free table", where students and faculty dropped off all sorts of items--food, toys, books, the works--for others to pick up at will. It was a wonderfully valuable ministry, and a saving grace for a lot of students who were barely making it. But despite a lot of great intentions, it was also where a lot of stuff went to die. I'm talking about used underwear. Broken toys. Expired food. I once came back after a long weekend, during which the building had been locked, to discover a garbage bag full of day-old bagels, that had been rained on.

Now, I say this as pastorally as possible, since I have never had anybody do this with anything but the best of intentions, but...your church/synagogue/local nonprofit is not a dumpster. If you cannot envision any way in which you can continue to use/reuse your item, do not assume that your congregation is more creative or resourceful than you. Now, there are obviously nonprofits that deal in this stuff all the time (Good Will, Salvation Army, etc.) and while they may present moral/theological quandaries of their own, they know how best to reuse/recycle stuff they can't use. And churches often will have yard sales (we have a great Marketplace every year) where they can turn our stuff into money for mission. But we can't handle it 365 days a year. Just give us a call! We might have a great need for your exact toy/piece of furniture/electronic item, but maybe not. I know our intentions are pure, but if it just comes down to not wanting to be the one to throw it away, then we're not helping anybody. Again, as pastorally as possible, maybe the best time to think about the landfill is when we buy new stuff in the first place...

2. Cash is always best. I know it sounds crass to say it, but I've heard it over and over again from every nonprofit I've ever encountered, and churches are no exception. I know it often feels better, more concrete, to give stuff. It's easier to imagine someone actually receiving that thing you gave, and enjoying it. But the fact is, I guarantee you your local food pantry knows where to buy food for half what you spent on it, just for one example. A lot of nonprofits will ask for SPECIFIC materials (usually new), and if they're asking, by all means, give it. But if you believe in their mission, and are able to trust that it will go where it will do the most good, write them a check. (and if you're not sure, charity navigator is a great website that rates nonprofits. Check it out.)

3. The best giving is wind for the sails--not pressure on the rudder. In a free-market economy, we are used to "voting with our dollars." We spend money at the store that sells what we want. We invest in the company we think will be profitable. But speaking from my experience as a pastor, sometimes money with strings attached--i.e., designated gifts to your church--can cause as many problems as it solves. Now, I don't mean this as a blanket statement. Now and then when a congregation begins a project, or feels a call to start a new ministry, the Spirit will blow in the right designated gifts at the right moment. It's exhilarating to watch, and it's stuff like that which helps us determine that we're really doing what God wants us to. But I've also heard of too many congregations that have more than enough money to fix their roof, pay their pastor, and feed the folks who keep knocking on their door, but they can't, because 50 years ago, that money got tied up in an endowment for organ upkeep. Mind you, I believe every parishioner should have a voice in directing the congregation's mission. We can do that by showing up at annual meetings and at worship, serving on mission teams, coming to our congregational leaders when something's bugging us (or, dare I say it, with words of praise?), or even running for congregation council if we feel called. But when we "vote with our dollars", offering more money when we like the direction things are going, less when we don't, we forget that giving is not optional for Christians: it's part of our mission, it's one of our most effective ways of bringing good news to all (especially the poor), and it's a faithful response to a God who blesses us whether we're screwing up or not. Exercise some trust: let your giving energize your congregation's mission, not steer them in the exact way you think they should go.

4. If any of the above makes you less likely to give, forget it all! Look, the most important principle of giving is the now-cliche Nike principle: "Just Do It!" I think I can safely speak for a lot of nonprofits and congregations when I say: when in doubt, give! I would a thousand times rather our congregation have an old couch we can't use, than be empty-handed when we're helping a homeless person furnish his or her first apartment. I would much rather have money for a project that we wouldn't have thought to do, than go right on living without ever having known somebody wanted to help. Yes, everybody values communication, and it always helps to talk with somebody from your church or chosen organization to see what's most helpful, but even if it's a small gift, or you're not sure they'll go for it, make contact! You just might be God's helping hands for someone this season!

So, I hope you'll take these reflections in the spirit in which I offer them: From one disciple of Christ, seeking how best to forward His Mission, to others with the same goal. In celebration of God's greatest gift to us in Bethlehem, let's be gifts to one another.

Prayer in Public: Another Christian View

‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Matthew 6:5-6

This week, the Supreme Court is tackling issues of prayer in public, government settings. The case being brought is from the town council of Greece, New York, in which every monthly meeting for about 15 years has begun with public prayer. And of those 130 instances of public prayer, 126 of them have been from Christian clergy. I have a couple of things I'd like to say about this, but I'd like to start with a thought exercise:


Imagine for a moment, that you're a Christian in the first century. Let's say you live in Ephesus, a predominantly Greek port town in Asia Minor, which is modern-day Turkey. Here's a story from Acts about your congregation.

The patron deity of Ephesus is Artemis, (or Diana, to the Romans), goddess of the hunt. Not only is she a center for religious piety--she's got a big humongous temple in the middle of town--but she also drives the economy. A good chunk of your friends and neighbors are in the silver trade, selling various idols, trinkets and other pieces of Artemis fan-art.

Life is somewhat complicated for you as a new Christian believer. Even something as simple as buying meat in the marketplace is a whole ordeal, because you don't feel comfortable buying meat sacrificed to idols, which is most of the meat for sale. You can't teach in the public schools, because doing so would force you to teach Greek and Roman creation myths as factual accounts to students. Additionally, you and your fellow believers (and also Jews, for that matter) are often falsely accused of atheism, because you have flatly refused to sacrifice to any of the many idols in town, preferring to worship a God whom nobody can see. This hurts your reputation, your ability to do business in town, and in some cases may even subject you to criminal charges.

So, let's say you're a civic-minded individual, and you start attending town council meetings. Of course they start with prayer. Why not? All these pious Greek folks, in a fairly free and open society, it seems like the right thing to do. But when the priest invites all to stand, and opens his mouth...sure enough...a prayer to Artemis. What do you do? Sit back down? Walk out? Just stand there and not make yourself a target of persecution? Well, you decide that just this once, you'll stand there. You pray silently for God's forgiveness, and for the chance to be a witness for Christ by what you say and do. OK. Crisis averted. Until next month.

Well, sure enough, next month they've got another priest. You're hopeful. The prayer begins...Artemis again. Hmmm...well, how many Artemis priests can there be? Imagine this went on for 15 years. Maybe you screwed up your courage and asked to share a Christian prayer, maybe you didn't. But still, month after month, Artemis, Artemis, Artemis. And with each prayer, the message is driven further and further home: "You are a foreigner. You are other. You are not one of us. You are not welcome here."


Okay. So Christianity has traveled a long and convoluted path since then, and you may agree or disagree with me about how closely the position of Christians then matches the position of religious (and secular) minorities today. But my point is, it's been a very long time since Christians have been in any such position, and before we start mouthing off about our own religious persecution, we do well to reflect on what Christian believers of ancient times (and even our brothers and sisters in Christ in other parts of the world) have dealt with. And without wading into constitutional law, the true intent of the First Amendment, and the nuances of this particular case, none of which I feel qualified to address, let me just say this as a Christian and clergy person, who has accepted multiple invitations to pray in public settings:

1. Prayer is not the time for preaching or Christian witness. Jesus covered this. You don't pray in order to be praised by others. You pray in solidarity with others, for your mutual need. This is important to remember even in an all-Christian environment: if you have something to say to a brother or sister, say it. Don't say it to God and hope they'll eavesdrop. That's not the model of communication Christ lifted up.

2. Nobody can stop you from praying whenever, however, and as often as you want. I think Christians should show up to town council and county council meetings. I think Christians should show up to legislative sessions, and PTA meetings, and School Board meetings, and they should show up praying. It is not the job of a local clergy person, or public school teacher, or civic leader to do all the praying on our behalf. Praying is our job. Period. If we Christians spent half as much time praying for our government as we do worrying about the government taking away our right to pray, there'd be a major revival in our country. And think of this: neither Peter, nor Paul, nor any of the apostles through whom the Spirit built this global Jesus movement, had the legal "right" to pray in Jesus' name. But they did it anyway. And with some success, I might add.

3. I'd rather pray silently than be censored by a governing body when praying aloud. In terms of religious liberty, what concerns me more than whether public prayer happens out loud, is what kind of prayer is allowed: namely, will some governmental body, either at the local or national level, be put in charge of which prayers are "sectarian" and which aren't? And what will be the standards? Is government-sponsored public prayer so important that we'll give up our freedom to pray as our conscience dictates in order to keep it going? If so, then maybe it's time to let it be a private, voluntary activity before the official business gets going.

4. Christians can disagree about what public prayer is appropriate. But God still shows up where we least expect. A statement that makes me want to tear my (remaining) hair out is the one that's been going around for ten years or so, where a public school kid asks why God doesn't stop violence in public schools, and God says, "I'm not allowed in public schools." Baloney. Complete and absolute, dangerous, heretical baloney. If God paid any attention at all to where God was "allowed" to go, the Israelites would still be in slavery. the people would never have heard the challenging message of the prophets. There would be no story to tell about God becoming flesh and dwelling among us, bearing our sin to the cross. We didn't invite God to do any of that. According to our human system of laws, none of that is "allowed." But God did it anyway, and will keep doing it. To say that God can only show up where audibly invoked by human beings under sanction of the federal, state, or local governments is nothing short of idolatry, and I want no part of it. God shows up anyway. And thank God for it.

I've already written more than I meant to, so I'll leave off there. But I do encourage you to pray about this. Pray for our Supreme Court Justices, in this sticky and complicated question. Pray for believers of all faiths, that they can feel supported and affirmed to reach out to God however they know how. Pray for those of no faith, that God's wisdom might find them on whatever level they are prepared to receive it. And pray for your brothers and sisters in Christ--some of whom are facing actual persecution that would curl your toes: for strength, faith and perseverance to finish this race.

Why it's OK (And Maybe Even Useful) For Christians to Enjoy Halloween

Though hordes of devils fill the land,
All threat'ning to devour us,
We tremble not, unmoved we stand,
they cannot overpow'r us.
-M. Luther


So, historical luck would have it that we Lutherans celebrate Reformation Day on the anniversary of Martin Luther's posting 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg Castle Church, which was relevant to him as the eve of All Saints' Day: October 31st. Yeah, that October 31st.

Those of you who remember your history recognize "All Hallows Eve" as "Halloween" in the old English, and would be aware of the bizarre history of the Christian church co-opting a significant pagan festival for its own purposes. So this puts Lutherans in kind of a tough spot, because we want to talk about the ever-reforming church, and grace, and faith, and God's word forever abiding and might fortresses and all, when our surrounding culture wants to talk about ghosts and zombies and stuff. I actually remember trick-or-treating at a Lutheran seminary on Halloween and receiving a Small Catechism from a very earnest seminarian. I was not impressed.

If I were calling the shots, I'd maybe move Reformation Sunday to the summer...maybe June 25th to celebrate the Augsburg Confession (Thereby also not making it all about just Luther?). I say this because I think Lutheran Christians might have something useful to say about Halloween, other than "No, no, bad, bad, evil, evil!"

So before the serious stuff, I thought I'd dust off some Biblical oddities that I always thought would have made great episodes of X-Files... DISCLAIMER: JUST FOR FUN. So below are some links. Just in case you were ever wondering, here are some possible references to...

Aliens in the Bible? Yes, it's a stretch...and a Bible scholar could certainly spoil all your fun and talk about the significance of each one of these images to someone 2,500 years ago, but...a great cloud descending? Amber light? Creatures with 4 faces each? Sounds kind of UFO'y to me... :-)

Vampires in the Bible? So what's with all this preoccupation about drinking blood? Why outlaw it unless people were...like...doing it? OK, Bible scholars, there's the issue of ritual purity, not to mention major public health concerns, so this is once again easily explained away...OR IS IT?*

*yes, pretty much.

Witches and Wizards in the Bible? Well OK, now we're getting somewhere. There are actually a TON of references to wizards, witches, mediums and sorcery in the Bible, and none of them positive. If you were ever wondering about the whole fundamentalist Christian opposition to Harry Potter, there it is in a nutshell. The ancient world was apparently full of people who (it was thought) actually practiced magic and used it in negative ways. The big issue, though, was that unlike Harry Potter, these folks were NOT PRETEND. They were real, and they were into the tribal religion of the areas where the Israelites had settled, which posed a threat to the people's faith in God, and to power that was meant to be reserved only for God. Now, it was a much more violent time, but we can not gloss over the fact that these texts led to some gruesome and abominable violence against innocent people, both in the ancient world, and up to only a couple centuries ago. This is not OK and it does not do God any favors. But anyway, there it is. And just as we don't stone people for eating shellfish anymore, we probably should let this one go.

Ghosts in the Bible? OK, this one is kind of cool, but also very weird. Background: God has rejected Saul as King of Israel and promised the throne to David, which kind of makes Saul go crazy and undergo this whole "Anakin-to Darth-Vader" style transformation and ultimately...drumroll please...put on a Halloween costume and go see a medium. Not winning any points with God on this one, right? He wants to talk to the prophet Samuel about an upcoming battle, and sure enough, the medium conjures up his ghost, who basically tells Saul, "Dude, let me sleep! What part of 'you're not king anymore!' don't you understand?" Very interesting, a little freaky, but pretty much unique in either Testament. no more ghosts.


So, fun, games and wild speculation aside, I think we as Christians can, in fact, have a faithful conversation about Halloween as it's celebrated these days. My talking points:

1)Most of it is PRETEND. Christians do not actually believe in this stuff, any more than secular folks do. Paul lays out for the Corinthian church pretty clearly the conclusion Jewish tradition had reached by this time: OTHER GODS AREN'T REAL. That's not to say there's no such thing as evil, or darkness, or forces and entities we can't explain (more on that below). It's just to say that in the final analysis, most of what we tend to get all worked up about is pretty much bunk, or hokum, or malarkey, or [insert your favorite old-timey word here]. So your kid likes to read fictional books about a fictional character who goes to a fictional school to learn fictional magic? Okay...and the big deal is? Are we equally worked up about fictional Luke Skywalker learning about "the Force?" You know I heard somewhere that Wookiees are not actually real. Go figure. Done right, Halloween can actually teach kids the value of imagination, as distinct from the real world, and help them deal with real stuff that is, in fact, scary, through play.

2)What little of it is NOT pretend, is DEFEATED. Back to Paul again. This time to the Ephesians:

"For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places."

So, the Bible is clear that evil is real, and it's more than the sum of its parts. Whether you want to call it Satan, demonic forces, or just the capacity for the darkness of the human psyche to get completely out of control, it's out there, and it's stronger than we are. BUT [cue trumpets] it's not stronger than God. Not by a landslide. The New testament is full of demons and unclean spirits and exorcisms. They come up against Jesus, anime-style, shouting and screaming, but it's no contest. They know who he is. They believe (even more than Jesus' disciples in fact) he is who he says he is. And (forgive the expression) they run like hell. That, or they get the heavenly beat-down, and then run. This ain't no Clark Kent messiah we're following. This is the Son of Man. The Alpha and Omega. Sin, Death and the Devil, you better recognize.

All this is to say, we need to talk with kids about evil. And maybe Halloween might be a good time. But they also need to know about the sign of the cross on their forehead, made at their baptism, which is a sealed deal for all time. There's no evil in all creation that can remove it. Christ is with you, and the Devil can't do nothing about that.

3) A favorite quote from Luther:
“I often laugh at Satan, and there is nothing that makes him so angry as when I attack him to his face, and tell him that through God I am more than a match for him.”

That sums it up. Every Sunday we believers do a big, fabulous, over the top, end-zone victory dance right in evil's face, not because of any good deed or anything within us, but because by the cross death is defeated. So we can laugh. We can joke. We can even have some fun at death's expense. And what better time than All Hallow's Eve?

So this is the long way around to saying: Why not dress up? Why not encourage kids to be creative, and use their imaginations? I'm personally not down with the guts and gore, nor the pitch forks and red suits, and I'm certainly not down with society seeking out yet another chance to objectify women through costumes. That kind of stuff will not be taking place at my house. But fun will be had...oh yes...much fun...

Fuzzy Reception

Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness. Romans 4:4-5

Sometimes we get fuzzy reception at church. Or more precisely, we get fuzzy about the concept "receiving": namely, that we need to do it.

Lutherans, ironically, can get so uptight about preaching justification as a free gift of God's grace--the idea that we can't "get right" with God, but only God's grace can "make" us right--that sometimes even our frenzy of focusing on God's grace can itself become a good work. I've chuckled before at the statement, "just preach the damn gospel!", but not just because I resonate with the frustration it expresses in an era of "self-help" sermons: also because saying "just preach the damn gospel!" is a law statement, meaning it commands a human action rather than announcing God's.

But as uptight as we can get about preaching grace, the grace does not necessarily find its way into our daily lives, especially our lives of faith. How many people do you know who have a "thing" at church: a particular way of serving, that they've probably done for years or decades, that they just wouldn't feel quite right not doing? I, and pretty much every clergy person, can relate to that. That's how we got here, after all. I love to lead worship. I love to share good news, especially when it's God's. I'm not exactly sure what I'd do on Sunday mornings if not that.

And see, that's kind of the point I'm making. My piety--the way I practice my faith--is all about doing. It's about serving. It's about making stuff happen. It's about "asking not what my church can do for me, but what I can do for my church." In short, when this kind of piety runs amok, it's all about me. The gift becomes something I am giving to God, rather than what I'm receiving from God.

Mind you: OF COURSE, doing stuff is good. If you want to vent to me about how volunteerism seems to be dying, I'll listen, and I'll happily vent some myself. Just yesterday, I was doing the CROP walk. I was pushing my son's stroller through the streets of Catonsville in the truly incomprehensible 90-degree weather of an October Sunday in Maryland, when my phone rang. And who was it, but the good old Red Cross, asking me to donate blood. Has it been six weeks already? I politely said it was not a good time, but that I would get online to find a time to donate real soon. And I probably will. But as I wiped the sweat off my forehead, I thought, "You know, if a few more people my age took the time away from 'Breaking Bad' to do something for somebody else, I'd feel an awful lot less guilty about taking a nap right about now, and it probably wouldn't even be interrupted by the Red Cross." That's where my head went, and I'm not happy about that. Because when I think like that, my faith becomes about me.

Christians for whom Communion is a regular thing, let me ask you something: do you "take" Communion, or do you "receive" it? Not to quibble about words, but there's a difference. To "take" Communion is to walk right down that aisle, and grab your salvation with your own five fingers. To stick your paws right up there and snatch that bread and wine, and make that grace thing happen. Or...do you receive Communion? Do you walk down that aisle hardly able to believe the good fortune that the Holy Spirit has breathed life into you, and given you trust enough to show up, even if your every question is not resolved? Do you hold your hands out like a beggar's, bewildered that such a treasure could fall into them even once, let alone once a year, or for goodness' sake, once a week! Do you "receive" in the sense of a passive verb: in which God is truly understood as the active "giver"?

I say this next bit understanding that there are legitimate, grace-filled reasons to disagree with me, but here's what I think: I would rather not hear my own name spoken by the one who's giving me Communion, because heaven forbid that I ever believe "Tim" brought a single, solitary thing into that equation. I bring nothing, and I deserve nothing. At the table, my name is "for you," because it is Christ who gave his body, shed his blood, and rose again. I am simply receiving.

Maybe this doesn't make much sense, because the life of a "giver/worker" versus the life of a "receiver" of God's grace, might not look all that different. Both would likely help an old lady with her groceries, or make a fool of themselves collecting money to fight hunger, or take time out of their schedule to vote or give blood or whatever. But I've seen the paths diverge more as folks grow older.

Most all of us hardworking American types are more comfortable being the "giver/worker", which makes it all the more difficult when we feel we have less to give than we used to. I've sat with folks who are ill, and folks who have spent years or even decades just gradually slowing down, and if those folks are not used to just "receiving," this time of their life can be confusing. I am losing count of the number of people who have wondered aloud why God wants them alive. As if their ability to set up chairs or cook for potlucks or write notes is what merits their walking this earth and breathing this air. I have a feeling that Jesus would strongly disagree with such an assessment.

I've done some reading about the Jewish concept of Sabbath, and I think that if you do it right, it's just about the most grace-filled thing you can imagine. It's a time of laying low, and remembering that our running and doing and serving never did keep this world turning around. God does that just fine without us. And so we sit, and listen, and receive: we connect ourselves back to our infancy, when that was all we could do, and forward to our final days, and our death, when that will again be the case. And I haven't been through it, obviously, but I think that some practice will make those days easier.

So my suggestion (and I want to figure out how to follow it myself) is that every person of faith take a Friday, Saturday or Sunday (depending on your tradition) now and then, and make it your job to "receive." to work on not working. To serve by giving others a chance to serve. Let God be God. God will do it one way or another, but this time, maybe we'll notice.

Teaching the Right Things for the Right Reasons

"I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well. " Psalm 139:14

My experience of High School was a hugely positive one. I was surrounded by great role models in addition to my parents: teachers, adult advisors, youth leaders, and fellow church members who were nothing but supportive. Still, what I remember most about being a teenager was the increasing sense that when it came to some pretty important stuff, I was being lied to. Well, maybe not flat-out lied to, but certainly given only the "approved version" of any of the big issues: drugs, alcohol, and of course, sex.

Mind you, even then I understood their need to state the case in its strongest terms, because heaven only knew MTV, Hollywood, and this "new internet thing" were not exactly giving us a "fair, balanced" account. But honestly...I remember stories in health class about a girl taking her first drag on a joint, and having such violent hallucinations that she jumped out of a second-story window and broke both her legs. This was, apparently, a fairly common occurrence. I remember a special assembly where a guy from the sheriff's department addressed our Junior class in advance of spring break, and made sure to warn us that "some of those states down south have a less lenient justice system, and they still have capital punishment." (So if any of us teens were thinking about doing some mass-murdering, we'd best do it here in good ol' Michigan.)

The effect of these scare tactics on me, and others, was the exact opposite of the intent: rather than a serious discussion, the whole thing felt like a huge joke. They obviously were not being straight with us, but had decided on a string of terrifying worst-case scenarios. Fortunately for me, I was able to largely stay on the straight-and-narrow more owing to an honest, trusting relationship with my folks, and to the sense that drugs, alcohol and the pursuit of sex made people behave like total idiots, and awkward as I was, I had enough trouble not behaving like an idiot stone-cold sober.

I feel the church can sometimes be complicit, and even take a lead role, in this conversation of half-truths, especially when it comes to sex. We go over the very legitimate moral and societal reasons why abstaining from sex before marriage is ideal--it's the only effective way to avoid STD's and unplanned pregnancies--but we go a step further, speaking to kids in terms of purity, idolizing the image of virginity (of course, often to a much greater degree with girls than with boys) and creating a culture where adult sexuality is something to be feared and viewed as evil. We do this armed with the notion that the Bible clearly lays out the sinfulness of pre-marital sex or intimacy of any kind. Well, about that...it seems Isaac and Rebekah, among others, did not get that memo.

Mind you, I do come at this from the perspective that the covenant of marriage and the trust it offers is, in fact, the best context for adult sexuality. That's what I believe, it's the moral standard I pledged to as a minister of Word and Sacrament (see "On Holy Living", section III of Visions and Expectations) and it's the standard our national church agreed to uphold (See our much-maligned, yet faithful and thoughtful 2009 Social Statement). But it's not because of any Pharisaical notion of purity. It's because I believe we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that, though a GOOD gift from God, our sexuality is only one aspect of a much wider personhood that takes our whole lifetime to discover.

I affirm marriage as the best context for sex because the self that God created for each of us is a vast, cross-country freeway that can yield thousands of miles of new discoveries, and the temptation of sexual promiscuity is to spend a huge chunk of your life--a tenth? a quarter? more than half?--just doing donuts in your own front yard. Same exact thing with drug and alcohol abuse. It IS about the dangers, and those dangers are real, but among them is the danger of never getting to know yourself. Jesus wants to show us what real abundant life looks like. What friendships and romantic relationships based on trust, rather than what people can "do" for you, are all about. What self-giving love and service for the sake of a greater good are all about. What continually testing yourself to respond bravely, truthfully, lovingly, in any life situation, what committing to actually growing and bearing fruit, are all about. And compared to that, it just seems like getting drunk, getting high, randomly hooking up every night is kind of...I don't know...boring?

Mind you, the worst case scenarios are still there, and it's hugely important that they remain part of the conversation. I've known teenage parents whose lives were forced onto a radically different track than they might have chosen for themselves. I've known recovering alcoholics who tear up every time they remember the person they were and the way they behaved when they were drinking. I've known people killed and maimed by drunk drivers. I've known one or two bright, smart people who overdosed. But for every one of those worst-cases, I've known four or five people who never got officially "burned", but whose lives are just kind of repetitive, monotonous, and shallow, because they were derailed by drugs or sex.

Let's have an honest discussion with adolescents. Let's level with them about what types of relationships we're lifting up as ideal, and why. Let's talk about abundant life in Christ, and our infinite potential as children of God. And let's talk openly about the very real allure of sex and drugs. Let's include the tragedies that "might" happen, as well as the malaise and captivity that's much more likely to happen. But as Christians, let's please, please also do this in the context of sharing the Good News: that we will mess up and fall short of these ideals, all of us, but that neither that nor anything else will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Psalm 103:1

Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name.

Bless
I speak well of. I praise. I lift up. I wish God well, and by extension I love what God loves. I commit to working for God's interest. I connect my own honor to God's honor. I give a gift that I can't take back, and I can't give to another.

the
Not "a", but "the", because there is one Lord. "the", meaning the name requires no further explanation: meaning creation itself, the galaxies, the swirling planets, the oceans, all creatures of every size, and even humankind on some level, innately knows the One of whom I speak.

Lord
YHWH. The name not spoken aloud by the ancient Hebrews, out of reverence, and because it is unpronouncable, ineffable, it can not be defined by any human language or idea, which is why its Hebrew meaning is "I AM", or "I will be who I will be". And yet, a proper name. A first name. A name freely given as a gesture of good will, even though sharing names makes one vulnerable. The name spoken as a lullaby to Moses, a lullaby to a put-down people who so desperately needed to know who it was that could hear them, who hurt for them, who meant to set them free in body and in mind. A name given as the very first step toward becoming Word Made Flesh, incarnate, infinite encased in the finite.

O
Addressing one's very self, both original author and reader. A reminder. A post-it note on the bathroom mirror. A command, by a grasping, flailing, desperately flawed person, to herself, to himself, in yet another attempt at self-control.

my
But is it "my" if it's "me"? Is a soul a possession? And if so, is it really "mine"? Is my heart, my brain, my body "mine", or is it "me"? In the same way, how is my soul "mine"?

soul
The "me" that God will remember, always. The sum, and more, of body, mind, heart. The life. The process that unfolds even now. The story being written word by word, transcribed by the world surrounding me, the wake, the ripples of my thoughts and actions in real time. Never disembodied. Never filtered or idealized. Always my true self in the present moment, warts and all.

and
The soul is first to bless, but there is more. Lest I limit myself, find a loophole in the contract, seek to rein in the gravity of my words of blessing.

all
There it is: not some, not part, not most, not on some date to be determined, not just on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, not the grizzle left over after the minutiae of everyday life has feasted on me. All.

that is
Just as God is "I AM," so existence extends to me, from the ground for being, the first cause, the author of existence itself. The things within me, the dreams and hopes, the envies, the fears, the skin flap on my hip, the cheek cells stuck in the toothpaste stains on my upstairs sink, is, and is because of God. Because God not only is, but happens to have invented is.

within
setting boundaries for personhood, which is tricky. Thoughts are "within", but they result in actions affecting the "without". Emotions are "within", but they build relationships and connect us to others outside ourselves, sometimes others we haven't even met. On the other hand, what I see, hear, taste, feel, smell, is "without," but becomes a memory, a part of my matrix of self. Is there really a "within"? a distinct consciousness, sovereign and set apart from all else, or is it interconnected, inseperable, from the consciousness surrounding me? If so, the part I have command of shall bless the Lord.

me
The singular consciousness. I think, therefore I am, therefore I bless. If any is true, it all is, and if any is lacking, it all unravels. Assuming I exist at all, I bless the Lord.

bless
No longer just the soul. This irreplaceable word, this word that can't be reeled in again, this declaration of loyalty and love, comes from my whole self, at my willing command. All that is within me, my many names and titles, signs the petition, the declaration to announce God's goodness and work for God's good, which is the good of all that bears God's image.

his
...but God is beyond gender. A clunky metaphor; so severely limiting. As if the God who not only birthed all things but envisioned the way biological birth takes place, who has born down with every mother in every labor pain, would know nothing of femininity. And yet, whether "his" or "her", we dare not strip God of personhood, of will, or consciousness. We dare not make God an impassive life force, a complacent law of physics behaving in experimentally repeatable ways through all time and space. God is love, and God loves, which means that God is not an "it" but a loving parent, and the name God has given to us, a handle that we might clumsily grapple with God's mystery, is God's alone, and belongs to no one else.

holy
Other. Alien. Beyond the strangest and most outlandish inkling of human fancy. Set apart for that very reason: because this is a whole other category of being, about which we know precisely nothing. Set apart to be of God, and to be explained to us over the millennia, but never domesticated. Never tamed. Never adapted for network television, or bottled up and sold next to the gift cards at the grocery store. The wild, prodigal, volatile things of God, which make us tremble with fear and with delight.

name.
This is what we bless, because this is what we know. A name. Nothing more. Not because we don't wish we could bless God in Godself, but because we wouldn't know where to begin. So here is the starting point. The name. The statement of being: "I AM". The statement of utter freedom: "I will be what I will be." The statement of solidarity: "I am here, always, with you, for you." The rest, we can not begin to know, to ponder or to bless, apart from the name, "YHWH", whose story is written across history and across our hearts.

The Spirituality of Prison (And/or Toddler parenting)

Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.

Hebrews 13:3

"About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them."

Acts 16:25

I've been thinking quite a bit about imprisonment lately. Part of it is the social statement just approved at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, which is a great and timely piece on a Christian model of restorative justice. I've definitely been thinking about Attorney General Eric Holder's move to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for low-level, non-violent drug crimes, which have contributed to the United States' truly horrendous prison overcrowding problems. But the biggest piece, I think, is that imprisonment was an everyday reality for the first generation of Christians, and it had a deep influence on their spirituality.

The word "prison" occurs 81 times in the New Testament. The first few reference the imprisonment of John the Baptist, there are few passion accounts referring to Jesus himself as a prisoner, but the vast, vast majority of them refer to the imprisonment of Christian believers. It wasn't a remote possibility, but an assumption, that at some point a Christian believer would get thrown into prison.

What I take from this, aside from once again being reminded of the "cushy Christianity" that we've gotten way too used to over the last few hundred years, is that Christians were constantly aware and praying in solidarity for those in prison. I think we could stand to regain some of that: That's why I'm so proud of Salem's partnership with St. Dysmas, a Lutheran congregation worshiping in Maryland correctional institutions. Solidarity with prisoners is a mark of Christian faith.

But another piece that may be more or less relatable at our own point in history, is that with solidarity came with preparation: to quote the TV theme, "Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?" Jesus briefs his disciples on what to do and say in the event of their arrest, trial and imprisonment (namely: don't over think it; the Holy Spirit will take care of it), and sure enough, they find themselves having to remember his words within a few weeks after his death and resurrection. And what they end up doing is interesting.

Acts 16 talks about Silas and Paul singing hymns to God while in prison, and getting the attention of the other prisoners. In addition, a good number of Paul's letters are written from prison. The time where physical freedom is curtailed becomes the time to reflect on the spiritual freedom you have all the time. You go into an empty room, you can't leave, and the spirituality you bring with you depends on where your heart and mind has been up to this point.

Let me clarify: It is my sincere hope and prayer that no one reading this will ever have to deal with being literally imprisoned, least of all unjustly. But we do have our piddly, minor little hassles that make us feel less free than we'd like. The cashier's line at the grocery store. The traffic jam. A doctor's or mechanic's waiting room. Or perhaps, as this somewhat ridiculous blog post suggests, the overall experience of parenting a toddler. In those short moments of captivity, those empty cells of our lives, what do we bring with us? How much of what's important to you do you know by heart? Bible verses? poetry? Prayers? Song lyrics? If you had to write a letter from here, to whom would it be addressed, and what would you have to say?

For Laura and me, the most common "prison" like experience is laying with Soren at bedtime, captive to his restlessness, waiting for his little eyes, to close, his breathing to deepen, and "grown-up time" to begin. And as with many of those other "mini-prisons", it's easy to get bent out of shape if I dwell on the lack of freedom, the injustice, the precious minutes of evening that are being taken from me. But what I've started to do instead is to run a Bible verse in my mind--word by word, as slowly as possible--and do a mental Bible study. Later on, I might post one I worked on yesterday.

Freedom--physical or spiritual--is not a given for all God's children, and it ought not be taken for granted. Let's use ours to the fullest.

Waves, not Blueprints

‘Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb?—
when I made the clouds its garment,
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
and prescribed bounds for it,
and set bars and doors,
and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stopped”?
Job 38:8-11

Several years ago, a very smart person introduced me to the idea of "gift-based planning", as opposed to "need-based planning". It's a pretty simple concept. You shape your life to fit the gifts you already have, rather than the stuff you think you need in order to have the life you think you want. To used the tired image of "glass half full/half empty", gift-based planning doesn't ask how to you're going to get the other half glass of water, but rather, what you're going to do with the half glass you already have. Because I'm a pastor and because I heard this in the context of visioning as a congregation, that's where my mind goes first, but really, it could apply to the life of any person or organization. We use both types of planning in our daily lives. Presumably, we choose a line of work based on our gifts-- what we're competent at, what we get joy from doing--but also based on our needs, i.e., food on the table, a place to stay, etc...

So I'm a guy who tends to think in metaphors. That's how I'm wired. We English majors pride ourselves on such silly stuff. But I had occasion to go to the Jersey Shore with my wife last week, and it was heavenly. Now, I'm not much for tanning (for which my healthy 80-year-old self is likely thankful), but if there is one thing that will inspire me to bare my pasty Wookie-esque torso, it's swimming in the ocean. There is just nothing in the world like it. And last week, dancing with the tide, jumping over some waves, diving under others, and in a few cases, getting a perfect ride in to the shore, I realized that I'd like to approach life as a good swim in the ocean of God's abundance.

What tends to be standard for me, though, is to treat my life as a construction site. I'm guessing I'm not alone. We are born onto the building site, with nothing there. Some of us have very tough situations to overcome: the uneven soil and persistent brush of dysfunction, poverty, lack of education, etc. And yet, at a certain point, we all play the architect, and draw up a blueprint of our lives, and get to work building. And of course, when we build that building, we expect it to last a long time, static and unchanging against the landscape. We expect God to provide us with the building materials: the concrete, the lumber, the steel beams, everything we imagine we will need to build the life we imagine we're supposed to have. Anytime the building materials don't come, or don't come in the amount or the order in which we expect them, or something collapses, it's a recipe for frustration. We blame ourselves for not being smart enough or working hard enough to get what we want. We blame others for standing in our way. We blame God for not giving us the shape of life that we wish we had. It's all need-based: we pay no attention at all to whether or not the actual gifts and opportunities that are coming our way fit our blueprint, or whether God might be trying to change our picture a bit.

Real life, as I've experienced it, is much more like swimming in the ocean. It's amazing to me when I go to the ocean (perhaps because I'm easily amused) that it never, ever stops. It's a constant whisper. Day and night, high tide, low tide, every second of every minute of every day for billions of years, the waves have been crashing in. Those waves are like the opportunities God sends to us. They never stop, but they're always changing. And none of them--not a single one--lasts forever. Most of the things that come our way in a single day are not quite right: a wave that isn't big enough, or crested way before it got to you, or won't crest until after it's past you. Sometimes, whatever the idea you have in your head about what you're supposed to do, it's just not the right time, or you're not standing in the right place, and you'll save yourself a lot of confusion and pain if you just swim over it or dive under it.

But here's the thing: the "right" waves--the right calling, relationship, friendship, hobby, the right way of serving God for you in the present moment--are crashing in all around you, all the time. You really can't miss them: unless, of course, you're momentarily distracted messing around with something that feels only half right based on your gifts or passions; trying to make something work based on the blueprint you already decided on. But even if you do get distracted, and we all do, it's not our fault and it's not God's. It's a chance to learn to read the waves.

There's a tendency sometimes, when something happens that makes a big, positive impact on our lives, to assume that it was part of one single linear chain of events that God had set out for us since the beginning of time: it just couldn't have been any other way. It was in the blueprint. I don't believe that. I don't believe it because even the things you were so sure were part of God's plan for you--your dream job, your dream home, your relationship to your "soul mate"--eventually come to an end. Every wave crests, and every wave hits the shore. Some of the really good ones take our whole lives to get there, and I especially thank God for those ones. But I could never sit with a recent widow or widower, or with someone recently laid off, and just shake my head and say what they've just lost was the only possible blueprint for fulfillment that God has to offer.

The hard fact is that what we often say was "meant to be" was one of thousands or even millions of "meant to be's" that God sends our way every day. And we have the terrifying freedom, as God's redeemed children, to pick one, commit to it, start paddling, and see where it takes us. God doesn't give us a blueprint or a finite number of bricks and beams for our lives. God gives us a dynamic ocean of infinite swirling, cresting, crashing possibility, and God works with our choices--even the bad ones--to get us where we need to go.

For my church friends out there, I would not blame you one bit for feeling a little beat up: like the blueprints that used to work for building communities of believers are not working anymore. So it's time to throw away the blueprint, walk down the street, take off your shoes, and wade in the ocean of God's grace. There's stuff happening out there all the time. God is up to more in any fraction of any second than we could possibly imagine if he had a million years to reflect on it. And there are wonderful possibilities for taking part in God's Reign all around us. The surf's up, and it always has been. This is going to be a lot more fun than we had originally planned.

Jesus the "Time Lord" (Or, If You Will, "Lord of Time")

"‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty."
Revelation 1:8

If you didn't know this about me already, I'm a fan of the British Sci-Fi series, Dr. Who. It's about a very old and very benevolent time-traveling alien, who has a basically human form, and invites one or two earthly followers at a time to travel with him throughout space and time, battling powerful and evil entities, and taking on various missions of righteousness. Oh, and by the way, "The Doctor", whose proper name is not to be shared or spoken aloud, every so often "dies" and undergoes a process called "regeneration," whereby he takes on a brand new body (and, conveniently enough, can then be played by a younger actor.)

If some or all of this plot line sounds familiar to you, you're not alone. If every person of faith received royalties from every film or TV show that "borrows" biblical stories or themes, we'd never need to pass the plate again! In this vein, you might want to check out this video later.

But my recent mini-obsession with The Doctor has gotten me thinking about time, and particularly, about how important it seems to be to Jesus in the gospels, and yet, how strangely time seems to move when it comes to Jesus' life...

I'll give you a classic example that scrambled my little brain pretty well when I was a teenager. Our creeds say that after dying on the cross, Jesus "descended into the dead" or "into hell", depending on how you translate it. And all four gospels attest that Jesus rose again on the following Sunday. And yet, on Good Friday, from the cross, Jesus tells the penitent thief, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ (emphasis mine).

I remember asking my Dad, also a Lutheran Pastor, about this one Easter afternoon, after a particularly long Holy Week. "So how did that work?" I asked, "Did he just, you know, drop the guy off in heaven, and then go down to hell, or what?"

As I remember it, my dad made an attempt at an answer, involving not taking any individual text too literally, and focusing on the meaning behind it, but I'm sure he was thinking, "I just hope someday you have a kid who asks you this kind of smart-alecky question after your busiest week of the year."

I remember talking about this with a pretty literally-minded Seventh Day Adventist once, and he had an interesting solution: "It's all about where you place the comma."

See, in Greek, there are no commas, so what in most English translations comes through as "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise", becomes, "Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise." So it's the promise, not the fulfillment, that happens on Good Friday. Rather like the subtle grammatical shift where "Let's eat Grandma!" becomes "Let's eat, Grandma!" Good save, punctuation. Grandma thanks you.

And I think one of those two explanations are where I'd leave it, but for a couple more interesting pieces from scripture:

*The very beginning of Jesus' ministry, where he says, The Kingdom of God has come near, which his hearers would have taken to mean that the age of oppressive earthly kingdoms was coming to an end and God was taking charge, right there and then.

*The transfiguration, where the disciples go up the mountain and encounter a Jesus who looks for all the world like Jesus after his resurrection, hanging out with Moses and Elijah (who Jews at the time believed would be a harbinger of the Messianic age and the final judgment), yet Jesus orders them not to tell anyone until he has, in fact, been raised.

*The fact that in all 3 synoptic gospels, Jesus speaks very openly and clearly about future events, including his own death and resurrection (multiple times).

*An interesting little verse in John's gospel where Jesus says, take courage; I have conquered the world!’ Not "will conquer," but "have conquered." This comes in the Maundy Thursday story, almost three full chapters before Jesus proclaims "It is finished" from the cross.

The point of all this, if you can believe it, is not just that the gospel writers all needed a good copy editor (although I'll readily allow that such a person might have been useful). I think there is a very intentional way in which Jesus' story is told, which probably comes from the experience of the first Christians, that in the life of Jesus, and especially in the times nearer to his cross and resurrection, time simply didn't seem to work the same way. The linear thinking of "first 'A' happened, then 'B', then 'C' ..." did not really apply.

And this collapse of linear time in proximity to Jesus kind of changes the way one views Christian spirituality. Heaven becomes less a question of "where?" than a question of "when", to which the classic answer is every single moment: both right now and also the future, both "already" and "not yet." The story of Jesus' life, and the spiritual movement that flowed out of it, becomes less a historical event in a concrete and unreachable past, but a moment of grace that is vitally connected to every moment, able to reach us any time we are open to it...especially when we gather with others who are also open. The future reign of God, when sickness gives way to healing and all will eat and be satisfied, reaches backward into our own time.

The practice of following Jesus is an act of time travel. In our baptism we are linked to the reality of Jesus' death and resurrection, as though we have gone through it ourselves. In Communion we are connected to Jesus' last supper with his disciples by more than historic memory, and we're connected to the final heavenly banquet by more than wishful thinking, but both happen right now by the reality of his promised presence. When we feed and heal others as Jesus did, it's not a reenactment: it's time travel, back to the moment of creation when God saw the abundant earth and said, "That is GOOD!" and to the moment of fulfillment when all will indeed be good again. It's letting God open up the unique window of this moment in history, that the presence of heaven might pour in from the beginning and from the end: from the Alpha and the Omega.

It's no wonder the gospel writers, and probably the original oral traditions, were a bit muddled when it came to Jesus' "time line." They were dealing with a time traveler: a man who remembers what life could have been, and who knows what it shall be again. An "alien," if you like, in the sense that he's human in a way that all the rest of humanity forgot how to be. A teacher. A healer. Dare I say...a "Doctor"?

Enjoy your travels in time, my friends.

For the Record: Why I'm a Vegetarian (And Yet Manage Not to Call Down Fire and Sulfur on Everyone Else)

"Agrippa said to Paul, ‘Are you so quickly persuading me to become a Christian?’ Paul replied, ‘Whether quickly or not, I pray to God that not only you but also all who are listening to me today might become such as I am—except for these chains.’" Acts 26:28-29

For the most part, Laura and I are pretty quiet about our decision to become vegetarians (which we both made in the same year, independently of one another--but that's another story.) We are not the type to get green in the face at the dinner table of a gracious host and say, "Do you have any idea what you're eating?" or some such rude comment. In fact, I find myself being asked about it at least twice or three times for every one time I volunteer information about it, and to my memory I have not once in sixteen years proactively changed the subject to that of my diet.

It's kind of like faith in a way--we're a little timid about it in the current cultural climate, where folks have plenty of other stuff to disagree about without our making it a huge issue. And, like sharing one's faith, it can also bring out a defensive strain in people, as if my life choice somehow invalidates or places me in judgment over yours. It doesn't. And to get the other unspoken question out of the way, we're also not doing it to annoy you.

With all that said, as my thinking about this issue has evolved over the years (I admit that in high school I more or less did it to impress hippie girls), what I've discovered is that there are some strong connections between this one simple choice and my faith. And like my faith, I do feel it's something I can share with others, so maybe they can derive some benefit from it too. In all honesty, I do happen to think the world would be a greener and more peaceful place if there were a few more vegetarians in it. So just in case you ever wondered, here are a few ethical and theological reasons why I choose not to eat meat.

1. It's a compassion thing.
Prior to high school, I didn't have much of any concept where my food came from. That's not uncommon; we tend not to think about it these days. I guess I just pictured the first ten minutes of The Wizard of Oz. A farm someplace, with a kindly flannel-clad old man and woman raising up happy cows, chickens and pigs, who will live a long, full life and meet a relatively painless death. You don't need to know much about farming in the 20th and 21st century to know that's a fantasy. We can choose not to think about it, but let's at least not deceive ourselves.

I don't intend to gross you out with gory details, but suffice it to say that life is not good for your average commercial livestock animal in America today--nor is it especially good for the laborers whose job it is to kill them. If the subject is of interest to you, Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation was a huge eye-opener for me, even though it came out ten years after I had already become a vegetarian.

Now, I have no problem with the basic principle that organisms need to kill and eat other organisms to survive. I've heard the snide, "oh, but why do you want to kill those poor, defenseless carrots?" comments plenty of times. But for anyone who believes in right and wrong, there comes a point where you have to acknowledge that like any resource, there's probably a right and wrong way to use it. And especially if said "resource" has basically the same central nervous system, pain receptors and fear response as human beings do, there's got to be a more compassionate way than growing it in a cage in close quarters with thousands of other animals, feeding it stuff it was never meant to ingest (including, occasionally, bone protein from its ground-up relatives), pumping it full of antibiotics, and shooting it in the head on an assembly line. It's hard to think of the God who made all creatures, called them "good," and commanded Adam to tend them, live among them and give them names, being totally and completely OK with meat production as it is today.

2. It's a stewardship thing.
I've also heard the hilarious joke when people point at my plate of healthy green veggies, grains and beans, and say, "That's not food. That's what food eats." Lolz. I'll give you a minute to stitch your sides back up and stop slapping your knee. Shall we go on?

That joke actually illustrates one of the best points in favor of vegetarianism from a creation stewardship standpoint. Did you know that almost half of all corn grown in the United States goes to livestock feed? Almost half. In a time when the climate is changing, droughts are getting longer and worse close to the equator, the amazon rainforest is being cut down at an alarming rate, and one in seven children on this planet is going to bed hungry. Kind of makes you wonder whether we couldn't make a major impact for the world God made, even if just one meal a day we "cut out the middle man" (or cow, as the case may be) and ate "what our food eats"?

3. It's an eschatological (thinking about God's future for us) thing.
A central tenet of all three Abrahamic faiths is that God has a plan for this universe. The creation is not static, nor are the sufferings of today indicative of what always was and will be. God's world is going someplace. And if God, who made, loves, and died to save this world, has anything to say about it, the place where this world is headed is going to be a more loving place than where we live now.

Nobody knows exactly what form God's future for us will take. As Christians, we believe that Jesus' resurrection is the first and dominant interpretive key for what eternal life will look like. It's all about resurrection. The creation we know, the bodies we know, the earth we cherish, only no longer fallen, but just as God originally intended. And the thing about God's original intent is, uh,

Adam and Eve were vegetarians.

Apparently, all humans were. Meat was mostly off limits until after the flood, at which point God had largely thrown up God's hands and given up on the idea of an ideal, harmonious creation. As a parent of 2 small children, I can definitely relate to this, remembering how uptight we were about every little detail of pregnancy/birthing/infant care with Maggie, and now with Soren, mostly calling it a win when he walks out the door with a diaper on. The way I read it, it was a concession to a fallen world. Now, I am not a Biblical literalist, so I can understand the argument that we have, in fact, evolved to be omnivores. But as any science-friendly Christian will also tell you...evolution does have a way of moving on, doesn't it?

So, about that garden. About that idyllic place where God placed the human beings to be in harmony with God's other creatures. About that healing tree of life, which if memory serves, actually doesn't serve bacon. About that peaceful kingdom where the wolf will lie down with the lamb. I think we can lean into that future. By the choices we make today, we can begin to live as though the kingdom has already come. And a vegetarian diet is only one of a hundred different ways to do that. If it's not for you, fine. You might try striving for peace and justice in all the earth, or forgiving others as much as you've been forgiven, or loving others as God loved us. Seems to me that not eating cow, pig and bird parts is quite a bit easier of a way to work on that, but hey, you're free in Christ, so knock yourself out. :-)

So that's where vegetarianism fits into my faith. But just as I could stand to be a much better Christian most days, I could also stand to be a much better vegetarian. I eat fish from time to time. I eat eggs and dairy, a LOT, even though much of what I just said applies to that stuff too. Hey, they're tasty, and they keep my kids from rioting most of the time. We're not Pharisees. We try the best we can, and often fall on our faces, just like everyone else. But even eating less meat is a step in the right direction, toward a greener, more peaceful future. So there it is, for what it's worth. It's not the 95 theses, but it's worth some discussion...maybe over a nice tofu roast?

Analog Theology Part IV: Analog Ethics

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. Jeremiah 31:33-34

In an increasingly digital world--a world broken down into one's and zero's, yes's and no's--I've been reflecting on human experience, and especially our experience of faith, as an analog phenomenon. It's unified, it can't be broken down, and in some very important ways, it will be slightly different every single time you play it back.

So we've already discussed analog reality, analog worship and analog faith. Here's where the rubber meets the road: analog ethics. We're done talking about what happens in our brains or hearts or souls. What difference does this make for what we do?

In his book, Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer starts off with a bombshell:

"The knowledge of good and evil appears to be the goal of all ethical reflection. The first task of Christian ethics is to supersede that knowledge."

Whoah. Kind of sounds like this Lutheran pastor, who wrote several volumes of Christian theology, taught at a seminary, and stood up to Nazism when most of his Christian contemporaries couldn't cave fast enough, is saying that Christians shouldn't trouble ourselves about figuring out right from wrong.

Sounds like that, but it isn't.

Instead, Bonhoeffer writes at length about the search for "knowledge of good and evil" as the first human sin, and that the very fact that we feel like we need to know, as a sign that we're fallen. Remember that Adam and Eve didn't just eat the forbidden fruit because it looked tasty, but because the serpent made the case that eating the fruit would give them knowledge of good and evil, making them independent. They wouldn't have to be in relationship with God anymore; no more asking or reflecting with God.

What we as human beings desire is a formula: the ability to decode the data of our lives for ourselves, a long list of "yes's" and "no's," one's and zero's, "good's" and "bad's", that can be copied in its exact form to apply perfectly to any situation. In effect, what the serpent is offering to Adam and Eve is to "burn them a copy" of the source code to the universe. That's what we want. But as we've already established, that's not how the universe works. We can't come to any legitimate knowledge of what to do with our lives, unless we first seek union with the source of our lives: God.

There's a good reason why the shelves in any book store, Christian or secular, are overflowing with self-help volumes. And there's also a good reason why if you wait five years, you'll be able to buy each of them at a garage sale for a dime. We want a simple formula, and there isn't one. We want something that will create a life free from shame, mistakes, missteps, regrets, and we want it to work every time, for every person in every situation. We want one's and zero's: "yes" to envisioning your life goals, "no" to negativity, "yes" to my political platform, "no" to the other guy's, "yes" to fruits and veggies, "no" to carbs, on and on and on. We want a fool-proof guide to living in peace and harmony within ourselves and with others, in perfect, HD, digital clarity. And there's no such thing.

When it comes right down to it, that's where Jesus and the Pharisees parted ways. The Pharisees were offering a universal template for behavior, and Jesus was offering a relationship that makes a unique impression on each person. Life was getting complicated: in a newly globalized society, the normal way of making amends with God for mistakes--by offering a temple sacrifice in Jerusalem--was getting too costly and impractical. People needed a way to get free of that system. The Pharisees' solution was an increasingly complex mechanism for keeping your hands clean in the first place. They proposed more laws to supplement the laws; more rules to supplement the rules; a great, long list of commandments to help you make sure you were properly keeping the commandments you already had. The goal, it seems, was to eventually have a perfect, digital, "downloadable" rule book for staying ritually and ethically pure on your own.

Jesus' solution was simpler, yet more demanding. Yes, he did spend a good deal of time on ethical teaching, just like the Pharisees. And, like them, he generally set the bar ridiculously high. But unlike the Pharisees, that was what Jesus was actually trying to do. I won't go as far as many Lutheran preachers, who have taught that the whole point of Jesus' ethical teaching was to point out how impossible it is to even try to keep the law, so people would have to rely on good ol' salvation by grace through faith. That's an anachronism. Jesus was a Jewish teacher, and he most certainly did want people to stop selling themselves short, and actually try to do what God requires of us. But he also was very clear that this doesn't come from a rule book. It comes from following him. It comes from making a commitment to be a part of his movement, and trusting him enough to go where it leads, in community with other followers. You can't just download a rulebook, and follow it on your own, because the rules will change as the world changes. What matters is relationships: coming to him, no matter how dirty or clean we think we are, and being forgiven, and experiencing a unity with God that makes us able to make the earth more like heaven.

Jesus does not want to give us the latest updates of "ethical living 2.0" for individual household use. He wants to live with us, and make an "impression" on us. To cut grooves into our souls, to play back the loving music of the heavens for this world. And Jesus makes the conscious choice NOT to hand down a digital template, or a book of "Yes's" and "No's," but instead to use human beings--flawed as we are--to play back the message of God's love. So yes, it's going to sound pretty lousy sometimes. Through living among other scuffed-up people in a scuffed-up society, we will develop some pretty major scratches and skips. We will have wounds and scars, all the more so if we are actually trying to follow him. But the scars are part of the message. The stories of redemption become part of God's story in this world, by which other cracked and scratched people--people still bearing God's image after all these years--might come to follow.

Analog Theology Part III: Analog Faith

The thrust of this series so far has been that in an increasingly digital age--in which almost every image or video we see, and every song we hear, has been broken down into one's and zero's by computers, and perfectly reconstituted for our eyes and ears--it's important to remember that our experience of life and faith is analog. It's unified and interconnected. It's too rich to be broken down into billions of "yes" or "no" questions. I've already talked about this principle as it relates to our experience of God, as well as our experience of worship.

Time to talk about analog faith. Let's start with what I'd classify as the "digital" approach: breaking things down into tiny bits, and reconstituting it in a supposedly "perfect" form. Again, I use the word "digital" metaphorically here, because this tendency has been around since long before computers. In fact, for as long as there's been faith, there's been the attempt to break it down into component parts, 1's and 0's, "yes's" and "no's."

The first three centuries of Christian spirituality were a wild, chaotic weed patch of different beliefs about Jesus. A wonderful theology professor of mine who has now passed on, Walter Bouman, once said, "You can't invent a new heresy...just read your church history and you'll find it back there somewhere!" But even the term "heresy" is anachronistic, because it implies somebody with power deciding what was the "right" thing to believe, which originally there wasn't. Everything was growing up together. Almost any theory about Jesus you've ever heard someone come up with after a beer or two, chances are, somebody thought of it in those first couple centuries.

But in the fourth century, and particularly after the Conversion of Emperor Constantine, church leaders became very uncomfortable with the weed patch. Through a centuries-long series of ecumenical councils, arguments and fistfights (no joke), a lot of what most "orthodox" Christians believe was set in motion. Now, no honest historian will claim that this process embodied Christian love and unity. Far, far...far from it. Believe me. But I'd still argue that there were some arguments the church kind of needed to have, and by the Spirit's power and despite ourselves, I believe we emerged with some great ideas about God.

But immediately, these ideas were no longer ideas. They were "orthodoxies." They became "yes" or "no" questions, to determine whether you were "in" or "out" of the church. They became "one's" and "zero's," by which, theoretically, you could burn perfect digital copies of the faith of fourth-century bishops, unto the ages of ages, world without end, Amen.

And the Reformation, for all its benefits, kind of cemented that "digital" idea of faith. With the dawn of the printing press came opportunities for scholars like Martin Luther to make exact copies of the "one's" and "zero's" of Christian orthodoxy for every single household, simply cutting out the "middle men" of church hierarchy. And it worked so well that almost five hundred years later, we're still using some of those same books, pretty much word for word, to teach our children the "yes's" and "no's" of faith.

Even in our sacrament of baptism, we ask the parents and sponsors a series of "yes" or "no" questions about their faith and intentions. Then, assuming the kids stay part of the church, we have them memorize a whole bunch of facts about the Bible, Jesus, the Law, faith, and then we stand them up and ask them all the same "yes" or "no" questions again so they can answer for themselves, and if they say "yes," then that's faith...right?

Well, we've managed all too effectively to convince the world it is. So much so, I would argue, that even some agnostics and atheists have bought into the same "yes" or "no", all-or-nothing narrative still touted by many Christians today: that faith means being able to say "yes" to a series of intellectual questions about God, Jesus, the church and the Bible, and not have to cross your fingers. Since they can't say "yes" to them all, they assume they must just not be Christians. If you're not a perfect digital copy of a fourth century bishop, or a sixteenth century professor, then no church for you.

But that was not how Jesus taught faith. Not once, in all four Gospels, does Jesus ever call a disciple by saying,

"Hi there: I'm Jesus, the 100% human, 100% divine Son of God, second person of the Trinity. You may remember me from such historical events as the dawn of time, and the redemption of all humankind. Now if I could just get you to check "yes" here on the clipboard to all that I just said, you'll be all set."

Not once. Not even close.

Mind you, I'll still make the case that all that stuff about Jesus is in the Bible. But what Jesus said was, "Follow me." The disciples learned from simply being with Jesus, and watching and listening for what mattered most to Him. This was an analog approach: a unified experience of the presence of Christ, which, by the Spirit's power, enables disciples to seek God's truth, and see it revealed. A relationship of trust, beginning with our letting go of what we think we know and believe, and handing it over to our Rabbi.

This relationship makes an impression on us. It cuts deep grooves into our souls. It teaches us how to live more fully as the people God created us to be, trusting that God's Spirit will guide us into all truth.

It's a very intuitive model, because for better and for worse, it's exactly how young children learn. From simply being around parents and caregivers, a child learns in her first year of life whether the world is a safe place, and whether others, including God, can be trusted. Every single child learns it, and not always because we set out to teach them.

The same is true with faith: the old cliche is, it's "caught, not taught." It comes from the experience of living in the Body of Christ, seeing and hearing and studying and experiencing what disciples of Jesus do, what matters to them, and what difference it makes. It isn't being able to check "yes" for a bunch of orthodox boxes. It's trusting God enough, so that your life is a "yes" to the way of Jesus. It's going around and around in our own scratchy, imperfect rendering of a disciple's life, trying to play back for others the experiences we've had of Jesus, which have cut deep grooves in our souls. It's messing up, and asking for forgiveness, and picking up the needle to try to play it again.

Digital faith demands perfection in every theological detail, or you're out. Analog faith means you keep coming back, you keep searching for Jesus, not just in church but everywhere you go, because you trust that in Him is life, and that life is the light of all people. You entrust Him with more than just a few lines of code in your intellectual, metaphysical framework, but with your entire being. It can't be done perfectly; but He doesn't want perfection. He wants us.

Analog Theology, Part II: Analog Worship

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’



One of my most treasured vinyl albums is a very old and worn copy of Beatles '65. Sure, it's in pretty bad shape, and it's by no means rare--they pressed a gazillion of those things--but its value for me comes from an inscription in very clear, intentional sharpie marker on the top right corner: "DAVE JAHN." I figure my dad must have bought it when he was 10 or 11 years old, and played the heck out of it. Consequently, as much as I enjoy spinning it, objectively speaking, the thing sounds terrible. Snaps, pops, skips and scratches galore. Still, in the whole history of the universe, there is exactly one copy of Beatles 65 that sounds like this, and even this one has changed since it was new.

That's part of what makes digital technology "superior," isn't it? There's no decay. A digital sound file will sound exactly the same from now on until forever, until the data is no longer accessible. It's just a sequence of one's and zero's, so it will sound the same wherever and whenever you play it. But analog is different. Every time you make a copy, you lose quality. You're making an imperfect approximation of the original, which may itself be an imperfect approximation of the actual event being recorded. Now, when I started making music of my own, I did it in the analog world, on a four track tape recorder, and I learned fast that you guard that master tape with your life, because the more times you play it, the more it will degrade. In very minute ways, it plays back differently each time.

So...analog worship. What all this makes me think about is our current "digital" approach to all kinds of personal experience, and by extension our experience of worship. I'm sure you've all seen this photo, comparing the announcement of Pope Benedict's election and that of Pope Francis:



In 8 short years, it became as important, or even more important, to record a historic event in "perfect" digital detail, even though everyone around you is recording the same event, as it is to witness that event with your own eyes and ears. And hey, I'm a major offender in this department. Just this past Wednesday, I was one of many preschool parents snapping photos of my daughter's graduation so obsessively that I finally had to snap myself out of it and actually be present there, in the room, as my little girl became a kindergartener before my eyes.

I think that for as long as there's been worship, there has been what I'd call the "digital" approach to worship: the attempt to take some huge, life-altering experience, and pick it apart into its tiny components, in the hopes of putting it back together in a "perfect" rendering that you can recreate every Friday, Saturday or Sunday from now on until eternity, just that way. For some churches, the event being recorded was something that happened in Biblical times, like the walk to Emmmaus above. Or maybe it was the house church worship of the early Christians. Or the spirit-filled worship or Reformation times, or maybe good old J.S. Bach's time, or theAzusa Street Revival of 1906, or the way worship sounded and felt when you were in Sunday School, or some amazing worship at a revival or conference you went to last year.

But digital doesn't work for worship, doesn't it? Our experience is analog. By that I mean, the harder we try to recreate a past experience, even a really amazing one, the more muddled it sounds: like a tape of a tape of a tape of something you got off the radio. Or like my Dad's almost 1/2 century old copy of Beatles '65, love it though I do.

To take a digital approach to worship, and try to take apart and put back together some seminal moment, will never work, because the past is only one part of what worship is. Worship is made up from what happened then, but worship is live. Worship is what's happening now. So even if you go to a liturgical church that goes through the same seasons every year and the same stories every three years, or even if you go to a non liturgical church that tends toward many of the same songs and Bible passages based on the taste of those in charge, those songs and stories mean a different thing today than they did last year or last week. They mean something different because the person speaking and singing and preaching them is a different person from who it was a week ago, even if the name on their driver's license matches. And it's a different group of people listening, even if the same twenty people come to your church each week. And oh yeah...you are different. You have lived and changed since last week, and God's Spirit has a different message for you today than last week or last year. It's not about trying to recapture an experience you've had, even an experience as important Jesus' last supper with his disciples, and his death on a cross for us. Because, "This is my body, given for you" means something different to the pain and brokenness and loneliness of this week--and this very moment--than it did for any other moment in history. It means something different because we are different: scratched and cracked and warped in slightly different places than before, yet needing it no less than before.

All worship is analog, in the sense that if your goal is to perfectly copy what's already been, the copy will degrade over time. But if you treasure the experience itself--how it has stayed the same, and how it has changed--you'll discover that, in fact, it's live, every time. Jesus promised it would be. You gather in his name, you bring your own unique, imperfect copy of obedience and faith, and he shows up and creates a brand new thing. Count on it.

Analog Theology: Part I

What you are reading is not words. It's a collection of one's and zero's that my computer sent to a server, which sent it to your computer, to put back together into a group of tiny dots of light that are meant to look like words to your brain.

The same is true of all digital media: print, music, film, art, whatever. It's all possible because of binary code, which at its most basic is millions and even billions of "yes" or "no" questions being asked and answered by computers. That's how digital photography works: the image the photographer's eye sees, gets recorded and taken apart into billions of little pieces, then put back together again on your computer. Same with CD's and MP3's: a singer sings into a microphone, and the actual voice of the singer gets taken apart into very tiny pieces. So tiny that you can't tell the difference and it sounds like one piece coming out of your computer speakers.

That's part of why I enjoy having inherited my parents' turntable. That is analog technology, which works differently. Instead of breaking up the sound wave, what happened was that back in the day, Dave Brubeck and his band made sound waves with their instruments, and the recording equipment did its best to actually capture their sound wave as a whole, then transfer it in one piece onto a physical object: a vinyl record. When the band played louder, the groove in the record is deeper, and when they quieted down, it gets shallow. an "A" note is a different physical shape in the groove than a "C" note. Quite literally, the aim was to create a one-to-one analogy (eh, see what I did there?) between actual event and physical object. Some people (including my dad) can hear the difference. They say even listening to the best digital recording is like watching the Mona Lisa on television rather than traveling to Paris to see it. I guess I didn't inherit the sound gene, but I do appreciate the difference on a philosophical level, and I love going down into my basement--a place set apart--to stop multitasking, and make time for music. (I am in fact going somewhere with this, so bear with me.)

It occurs to me that reality is not digital. It is analog. It is shapes and waves. It is light, at a particular frequency, with a particular wave length, hitting our rods and cones and being transferred by chemical reaction to our brain. It is sound waves of a particular frequency shaking the air and making our eardrums vibrate. It is not one or two, but millions of kinds of molecules, made from not one or two, but at least 92 naturally occurring elements. It is human beings: made of DNA, from not one or two but four base molecules, combined in not one or two but billions of possible combinations. Even at the subatomic level, there are more than 2 base particles. Even when we're asking about long stretches of space, and wondering if there's something there as opposed to nothing: Well, with the discovery of dark matter, we realize that even what we saw as "nothing" is yet another variety of "something." This can not be broken down into one's and zero's and remain intact. We can break it down into a million, a billion, a trillion yes or no questions, and the whole will still be more than the sum of its parts. Reality is analog, not digital. It's one piece, that can't be broken down. It's not black or white, but a whole spectrum of color. That's why they can build a computer that can beat the world's best chess player, but fifteen years later, they can not make Siri "get" you.

The reason this matters to me is that I believe God wants it this way. That's not to say I don't believe in computers. (I'm using one to type this, for goodness' sake!) It's to say that long before computers were around, we began a desperate effort to divide things up into a long series of yes or no questions--good or evil, black or white, saved or condemned--and by the nature of God's creation, it can't be done. What we'll come up with is a clumsy, pixelated version of reality. An Atari 2600 graphic rendering of Niagara Falls.

In the very beginning, there was only darkness and chaos, and nothing was any different from anything else, and the first thing God did was make something different: "let there be light." and on the second day there still wasn't enough difference, so the waters below and above the dome of sky got separated. Then land and sea, and plants, and sea and land creatures, etc., etc., etc., all the way to humankind, in not one but two genders at the same time, because diversity is how God works. God does not intend a creation, nor a humanity, that can be broken down into a series of "yes's" and "no's", and thus, I'd be very surprised indeed if God in Godself can be, either. Not in Megabytes, or Gigabytes or Terabytes. So I'd like to do a little theology in the weeks to come, based on the assumption that reality is analog, and so is God, and so our conversation has to get beyond one's and zero's, beyond "yes's" or "no's", into asking what shape our thoughts and words and actions might take, were they truly imprinted--albeit imperfectly--by the unified shape and image of the Lord of Hosts. I hope you'll join me.