Faith Isn't a Thing. It's How You See Things.

"[Jesus] himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything."

Colossians 1:17-18

It's funny how connected to the school year our lives remain, even years after we leave school. Everything seems to kick-start again in September.With a daughter in the public school system, for me it's even more of a stark change now, from "summer vacation" (which is its own kind of busy) to "busy," followed by "busier", "busiest," "winter break," "busy," "busier," "busiest", and back to "summer vacation".

Round and round we go.


And do you know? We wear it like a badge. We pant, we roll our eyes to our friends and neighbors, we laugh at ourselves for burning the candle at both ends, we burn out, we drop a bunch of stuff, we start to ease back in, we burn out again, and we acknowledge to anyone who'll listen just how ridiculous we think it is.


But we like it. We find worth in how much we can do. We wouldn't admit it publicly, but we like being wanted in more than one place at once, we like having a full calendar, flitting from place to place, putting out various fires in our lives. We idolize busy people. The best kind of person, for us, is a person whose every waking hour is accounted for, who's operating at maximum efficiency, who just could not possibly fit in one more thing.

Let me be clear about this: if you identify with this, I have zero intention of passing judgment on you. It's how I often operate too. There can be other posts about Sabbath rest: about finding our value, not in what we do, but in the fact that God values us, and how by God's grace, the world goes on even when we take a breather. We need those reminders too, but that's not what I want to talk about.

What I'd rather talk about right now is what often happens when we think of "church" as part of our list of "things". You know, that list of things that starts growing in September, and keeps growing in October, and by December is so long that only by virtue of a sugar-cookie-induced frenzy of holiday mania could you ever get to the bottom of it.

The list that you reevaluate in January...and start crossing the "non-essential things" off.

Mind you, you can be just about as busy as you want here at church. We do have a full calendar. I was here a couple Tuesdays ago and the building was being used by

seven

different

groups.

Seven.

Christian congregations are not the "busy-ness police". In fact, when we're not careful, showing up for every last event connected with a congregation can be a way of feeding our busy-ness addiction. "Church" as a list of events can be a medium for our mania: a way to distract ourselves from major problems in our lives, which our faith really ought to be helping us face head-on.

But there's a big, glaring difference between "church"--meaning, what you do with your brothers and sisters in Christ as part of this congregation in this place--and "faith", meaning your lifelong walk of trusting in Jesus Christ. "church" is a "thing", or maybe even a group of "things", that you can add and subtract from your list. 

Faith is not a thing, as such.

It's the way you see everything. Each thing in your life. It's not something you add to your schedule, and show up for at a given place and time. It's a perspective. It's the lens through which you see your whole life. How you spend your money, your time, your soul. 

You may think you know where I'm heading: that I'm going to end up giving you a pass, and telling you that you can worship where you are, on the soccer field or at the campground with the Scouts, or at the bar, or on the climbing wall.

Nope. Sorry.

Worship feeds our faith. Being accountable to other Christians, showing up for them, like they have agreed to show up for us, adding our voice and being built up by theirs, has been throughout the millennia one of the most reliable ways to be faithful, and being faithful is what having faith looks like when it's more than an idea: when it takes on flesh.

But worship is not the only way.

Worship--at least the kind of worship we strive for together--should feed into your week. It should adjust your lenses, and help you focus and see Jesus moving and dancing throughout the hectic week you're getting set for. It should connect you to the life you're already living, rather than introduce you to a whole new list of "church-y" things to do with your week.

Being in worship is important, and generally it won't happen by accident, so it's important to set goals (and not beat yourself up if you don't meet them! If you meet every last goal you set, you might want to set some more challenging goals!). But being in worship is not the same as faith. Going to church is not faith. Going to church is a thing. It's an important thing, but it's a thing. A blip on your Google calendar. A line in your paper planner. Faith is how you read the whole thing.  

Good News for People Who Love Bad News

"A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it actually is."

Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 

I'm not sure what it is about this summer--whether it's an all-time high in public awareness due to the 24-hour news cycle, or whether the last 8 to 12 weeks have been objectively more terrible than average for the citizens of planet earth--but this summer is starting to remind me of the title of one of my favorite albums by Modest Mouse: "Good News for People Who Love Bad News." 

Ebola. War in Israel/Gaza, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. Unaccompanied minor refugees. Unrest in Missouri, and the ever-present demon of institutional racism. And to top it off, a U.S. legislature that has pretty much proven itself incapable of legislating.

Considering that very few of our own personal lives are the proverbial "bed of roses" to begin with, and that there are real, measurable effects on our brains from being exposed to news like this--especially if it's sensationalized, as so much news today is--it would seem a natural reaction for Christians to view their faith as a kind of "escape." To sing songs like, "I'll Fly Away", to focus on "positive thinking", to just praise God, keep smiling through it, and know that our present sufferings are not forever. Maybe things are bad here on earth, but my, oh my, won't Heaven be great?

Well...yes, it will, but there's more to it than that. Especially at times when things seem really bad, we get tempted by what Martin Luther called the "theology of glory." The idea that God is only really visible in strength, in power, in positive experiences, in good vibes, in the warm-fuzziness of life. The idea that faithfulness to God comes hand in hand with happiness and success, and that if you don't have one or both of those things, all the time, then there's something wrong with your faith. 

Luther believed the opposite. He wrote, "He who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering." If we are unwilling to look into the darkness in our lives and in our world, then we will never find the Savior who entered into that darkness for us. If we are unwilling to admit that suffering exists, then we can not claim that Jesus suffered for us. Without looking at the cross of Christ, any suffering, injustice, sin, and death in our lives becomes a plague, which we must escape at all costs to avoid infection. But looking directly at the cross, we see the face of God hidden in the face of an executed criminal, being tortured to death by a reigning Empire--and once we see God's face there, we realize that there is no darkness into which God can not go, and has not gone. 

Without the cross, we dare not face reality. If it's all up to us to fix this world, then it's most certainly time to "fly away". Turn off the TV, unplug the computer, power down your phone, and run off into the woods somewhere, hoping the world won't catch up. 

But if, on the cross, we can indeed see a Savior--the one who accepts every moment of our lives, no matter how awful, into his own body and fills it with God's forgiving presence--then we can stare down anything else in this life, knowing that God is there, too. 

This does not make us as Christians responsible for staring down every last dark hole, much less crawling into it and personally rescuing all those inside. We aren't obliged to be tied to our TV's, computers and phones, having the latest info on every emerging crisis and taking the next plane to head it off. In fact, just the opposite. A theologian of the cross knows that the final word in the face of sin and death was spoken from the cross: "It is finished." Therefore, we bear in our hearts the Good News to all who suffer, that Christ suffers with us, and that with death comes resurrection. We need not be saviors, because the world has only one of those, and he did the "saving" 2,000 years ago. 

A theologian of the cross is a person with no need to "escape" this world, nor to be perpetually martyred for it: a person set free to do what she can to love her neighbor as herself, while trusting her entire life to the One who first loved us.      

 

What I Learned at the Dentist

Today was my semi-annual dentist visit, and it was, as expected, a mixed experience. On the one hand, my teeth feel more clean and fresh than they have in...well...six months, I guess. On the other hand, my gums hurt like the dickens, and it's my own fault for not flossing as much as I should.

Overall, I feel great about getting back in the habit of seeing a dentist regularly, but it took a long time to get back to it. As in, before moving to Catonsville, I'm pretty sure the last time I was on my parents' insurance plan. The reasons why I stopped going were obvious at first--didn't have great insurance during seminary--but then became more blurry as time went on. And it occurs to me that this might be a parallel and a point of understanding for me, of what it is that makes folks stay away from church for months and even years at a time. It's always been a part of my life, and maybe has for you too, and that's why it's especially important to have these "connection points" to help understand the increasing number of folks who do not worship anywhere, and haven't for a long time, if ever. Here are some things that kept me away from the dentist...

1. The Precipitating Event: Graduating College. I did not graduate college thinking, "Oh, I'm so relieved I don't have to go to the dentist anymore!" I wanted to go; I just couldn't make it happen in that chapter of my life. Anytime a big thing changes in your life, lots of little things change too. So it is with worship. Maybe you graduate high school, you move, you have a baby, you switch job schedules, you get married, you take a long trip somewhere, and before long, you haven't worshiped in a year, and it's hard to get back. My experience is that the big traumatic conflicts, or the fundamental shifts in faith perspective, happen far less often in our lives than simple changes in routine.

2. The Guilt. Oh, the Guilt. What's funny about going to the dentist is everybody I know basically believes in going to the dentist. I was among them. And yet, for the better part of a decade, I did not go. And the worst thing was, the longer it got since I went, the harder it was to imagine going. Like those folks who give me the line, "Oh, I think that church would fall down if I walked in those doors", I had this deep sense of dread. The dentist will ream me out. The dentist will get up in my face and shout at me for not flossing. I will have a hundred cavities. They'll just pull all my teeth out and give me dentures. The reality, however, was that once I found a dentist and made an appointment, it ended up being a pretty chill encounter. Got the teeth cleaned. No cavities. Actually got a compliment for brushing. The guilt was much ado about nothing. I would venture to say about our congregation (and I'd better be right!) that the guilt trip folks imagine after being gone awhile will simply not take place. But in order to learn that, you have to come...

3. "Busyness". It took us a while, and a lot of work, to find a dentist. It's phone calls, and web sites, and getting recommendations from friends, and a lot of stuff that's easy to put on the back burner. It's kind of a low priority, honestly, unless you're one of those super-disciplined, organized people who sits down on a quiet day and pays bills and balances checkbooks and dusts, and if you are, you have my deep respect, because I'm more of the "sit in front of the TV and try my level best to recover from the whirlwind of a week I've had" type of guy. Oh, we are so busy as a culture. Too busy to eat right, too busy to care for our teeth, too busy to dust, and way too busy to worship. And it really does take a lot of work to find a congregation that seems to "fit" for you and your family. And I can tell you that it's worth it, and that God does have a church in mind for you, but really, you won't believe me until you find that church.

4. Forgetfulness. Let's call it what it is. Honestly, as busy as we were, the thought occurred to me, "man, we should go find a dentist" about as often as we should have been going in the first place...maybe once every six months or so.

That is, until it was time for Maggie to go for the first time. That changed everything, because in helping Maggie on this first step of caring for her teeth, it finally occurred to Laura and me that we also have teeth, and it would look pretty silly if we asked Maggie to do something that we ourselves could not be bothered to do. So we became a dentist-going family yet again. I've heard this again and again with church...that it's concern not for our own spirits, but for our children's spirits, that brings us back to worship. And yeah, I think God can work with that. Maybe the love we have for our kids is one way God can teach us love for the children of the world. Maybe it's through our concern that they learn to be "good people" that God can convict us of our repeated failed attempts to be "good": about our need for God's grace, and to hear those words of forgiveness each day.

Finding a dentist is a pain. Going there takes time out of your day, and it's not always your top priority, and sometimes it hurts, and once in a while they find something you wish wasn't there. But I go because accountability to others is a major way God works with us. Just brushing by myself isn't going to cut it.

So it is with worship.

"Off the Grid" in Christ

"All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved."

Acts 2:44-47

Well, It's been about fifteen years since I've had a role in a full-length play (even longer since I've dared to appear in a dance number--and if you come see the show, you'll know that's for good reason!) but this weekend, I'll be joining with some other members of Salem, and our surrounding community, to put on a production of, "Oliver!" This is, of course, based on the Charles Dickens novel, Oliver Twist, in which the title character, an orphan relegated to a workhouse in awful conditions, eventually finds solace in a community of pickpockets in the slums of 19th century London.

I'm amazed the more I think of this story, and--though of course this instance of it existed only in the imagination of Charles Dickens--how often the basic elements of it repeat themselves in human history. Seems like every time the formal structures of a society make up their minds to ignore some need, or stop caring for some of God's children, somewhere "off the grid", up like weeds pop up these little communities of care for one another. They are by no means perfect, but up they pop, as an indictment of the society itself.

It occurs to me that there is a prophetic spirit buried within the human community. In the Bible, God often mentions writing God's law--God's expectations for human life together--on the hearts of the people. Not in a book, or in a societal structure, but more like, somehow encoded in our DNA: right from wrong, justice from injustice.

The technical term for this type of view is "natural law," and I'll warn you, it's not conventionally viewed as very "Lutheran." We Lutherans believe that humans by ourselves--without God's word--are not capable of doing anything but sinning and falling short of God's expectations. If we took the natural law principle and did "what is within is," society would look even worse than it does today.

But at the same time, "God's word" and "human institutions" are two very different things. And so, when those in power fall asleep at the switch--when kids start to go hungry, when debts get out of control and whole nations are taken into indentured slavery, when empty worship and piety starts to stand in for real acts of mercy in the world--then God's word goes "off the grid," into communities willing to do the work of love which those who rule over them are not.

One such community arose around the prophetic ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, and continued after his unjust death at the hands of those in power. Not only did his community continue, but they continued and grew stronger with the express belief that his presence continued with them, guiding them each step of the way. They took care of the widows, the orphans, the slaves, the prostitutes, the ones that their public institutions had agreed to ignore, and they did it not to win elections or campaign dollars, but because they believed it was their commission from God to do so. And they believed--probably rightly--that if they didn't care for each other, no one else would.

It's funny where this prophetic spirit will arise. Whether it's in the surprisingly egalitarian pirate crews of the 17th and 18th centuries, or the grass roots Catholic Worker Movement arising out of the poverty of the depression era, God's Word often does not wait for approval from a president, a congress, a pope or a pastor. It just gets working in the heart of a community, and wild things start to happen. Like Grace.

"Born to Die"? Not Exactly.

I haven't updated this blog in a while, and I would not have pictured myself taking the time to do it on Good Friday, but I had a quick reflection stored up.

So, I have a very vivid memory of a Christmas parade in Easton, MD, which made an impression on me. Most of the floats (including the one for the church I was serving at the time) were very much in the spirit of the season: stables and animal costumes and cute little kindergarteners in white robes and angel wings.

And then there was this one church, whose float was a big papier-mache globe, with an even bigger cross in front of it, and huge letters in front of that, saying, "BORN TO DIE." And that was it. Huh.

I know for a fact that this church did not make up this slogan. It's a fairly common refrain among Christian groups. And the reason, I think, is because of the tremendous significance of Good Friday, and of the sacrifice Jesus made for us and for all people. In churches across the world, expect to hear this opening versicle: "Behold the life-giving cross, on which was hung the salvation of the whole world." There you have it. It's huge. Jesus, by his death, destroyed the power of death, so that in his earth-shattering resurrection we would hear an echo from the future: of our own eternal life with God.

But does that translate to "Born to die"? Does the importance of Jesus dying on the cross, the centrality of this event for Christian (and even human) history, overshadow any other significance the life of Jesus might have had? I think the Bible says otherwise.

I remember reading (but can't find the quote just now) from Brian McLaren, in his book, "A Generous Orthodoxy", who speaks of the tragedy of the Christian creeds: that they tend to jump right from Jesus' birth, to his suffering and death. No teaching. No healing. No binding up the broken-hearted. No good news to the poor. no blessings for the meek, the poor in spirit, none of that. He was born, he died for us. End of story.

Now, why the creeds (both Apostles' and Nicene) are formulated that way is a much longer story, on which I'll admit I am not an expert, but long story short, they were meant to settle disagreements. Encased in these words were the winning arguments of theologians on the right side of history. But what happened between Jesus' birth and his death, everybody basically agreed upon, because that was the meat of all four canonical gospels, as well as many of the others people were reading at the time.

So let me ask a painfully obvious question: What did Jesus say he was here to do? Well...

To let the oppressed go free.
To testify to the Truth.
To give abundant life.
To seek out and save the lost.
To serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Does this mean Jesus didn't plan to die on the cross? Was the whole thing an unexpected and horrible tragedy? Absolutely not. You can even see in the last quote, that Jesus fully understands the consequence of living a life so committed to love, justice and truth. He wasn't chomping at the bit to make it happen, of course: he prayed earnestly that there'd be some other way. But he knew well that if he embodied his teachings, and practiced what he preached, the cross was the only place this thing could end.

One big danger with "born to die theology"--the tendency to zoom so closely in on the cross that you lose the context of the beautiful life it ended--is that, ironically, it can kind of sanitize what was truly a hideous display of Imperial might and brutality. It somehow feels more "okay" if Jesus was totally cool with it; if he and God the Father shook hands on it before the little Bethlehem excursion; if it was three hours of pain followed by heavenly bliss not only for him but all the billions who would later believe.

Another danger with such a tight close-up on the cross: seeing it as the only important thing Jesus ever did--is it empties Jesus' life of its prophetic power. It erases his weeping for Jerusalem, his turning the tables to expose a society robbing its poor, his free food and healthcare initiatives, for goodness' sakes!

Finally, if we take the cross out of context, it becomes a one-off incidence of suffering: as though in comparison, everything that has ever happened since, is small potatoes. Every unjust trial. Every mocking word. Every dehumanizing policy. Every cold-blooded murder. Every Holocaust. As long as those being politically and socially crucified today can accept Jesus as their savior, and acknowledge his sacrifice on the cross, well, then their suffering doesn't matter anymore, right? Wrong. So, so wrong.

Ironically, to see "only" the cross, empties the cross of its power. To get caught up in the "wonder" of that "wondrous" cross, makes us forget that it wasn't wonderful at all. Nor is the pain and injustice today, which he died to end.

The cross is important because it was the culmination of Jesus' walking the way of the cross: the way of total obedience to God, of making God's kingdom of justice and peace a reality in the world around him. And yes, because the result of that walk--the life, not just the death--was salvation for us and all who can trust in God. But nobody--not even Jesus--was "born to die." God likes life. That's why God invented it.

Sermon: Ash Wednesday 2014

Ash Wednesday: March 5, 2014
2 Corinthians 5:21b-6:10 [really more like 5:16 through 6:10]

I read online from a friend,
That she struggles enough with self-esteem the rest of the year,
And doesn’t appreciate a day like today,
Being told we’re dust:
Dirty, low-down, side-of-the-road,
Wipe on the rug before you track it into God’s house, dust.
I get that. All too well.
When I was in first grade, my mom was busy and I wanted her attention,
So I sat in the garbage can and pouted.
I told her I couldn’t do anything right
and I was just garbage.
Not sure if I understood all the implications,
But it got her attention anyway.
So for many of us,
Who hide our insecurities behind big words, big actions, big prayers, big checks, big smiles,
Those of us who get up each morning
and frantically try to re-mold ourselves
into a seemingly normal, healthy, happy, strong, successful person,
Isn’t it cruel, even abusive,
For us to make you stand up here
While we call you “dust”?
For so many who struggle all our lives with not being “good enough”,
Do we need one more reminder of our sin,
Of our falling short, not just of our own or our family’s expectations, but of God’s?
These questions are valid, even vital,
But to me, the problem for most of us isn’t that we’re so puffed up and think we’re spotless, sinless, clean and lily white.
The problem is we know we’re dust,
And we need God to help us re-frame
what that means.
It’s not about putting ourselves down.
It’s about reconciling, return, restoration.
The psalmist says, “Restore in me the joy of your salvation.”
Paul says, “we entreat you on behalf of Christ,
Be reconciled to God.”
Joel says, “Return to the Lord your God.”
The restoration, the reconciliation, the return, is a return to dust:
Not necessarily in the sense of actually dying,
But rather, of letting our false self crumble.
Returning to the dust by remembering we’re part of the universe, the world God spoke out of nothing, and proclaimed good!
We’re not some uniquely awful, nasty, sinful, irredeemable substance,
We’re dust.
We’re all made out of the same stuff as forests and mountains, stars and supernovae.
The very elements in our body were formed billions of years ago in a dying star,
And they came into being on purpose,
Because God wanted us here.
We all are dust, scooped up in God’s hands, formed in God’s image, breathed to life by God’s breath.
When we say, “You are dust,”
We’re not putting each other down,
We’re lifting each other up.
We are dust: built with the building blocks of God’s creation.
We are dust: the clay God formed once,
and God can re-form.
Yes, we are the ashes of misplaced expectations, and broken relationships, some of which we set fire to ourselves.
Yes, we are the deteriorating remnants, the compost of previous attempts to live in God’s light.
But remember, we are dust: not stone.
We are potential for change.
We are dust: the only place where living seeds can grow.
We are dust: part of the world, which, through Christ, God reconciled to himself.
We are dust; soil, which knows no state or class or ethnic or national boundaries.
We are dust: part of the new creation, begun at the fertile ground, not in Eden,
But at Golgotha. The place where our Lord Jesus became our sin, even though he knew no sin, so we might become the righteousness of God.
The cross was the gateway where he entered into our death, so we and the whole creation could enter into new life.
We are dust: good dust. God’s dust.

When we return to the dust during our lives,
In seasons like this,
It’s to remember that the fake person we keep trying to put together will crumble,
And that’s a good thing.
It’s to remember we’re already connected and reconciled, both to God and each other, through the cross of Christ.
It’s to get some practice with what Paul called the “ministry of reconciliation”: not a ministry of putting down nasty, sinful unbelievers,
But of telling every living person the Good News that they, too, are the dust of God’s making, part of the new creation begun at the cross.
It’s pointing out the reality that even in this brief blink of an eye we call life,
We can be reconciled, to God and each other,
Whether we see it or not, whether we believe it or not.
But when we do believe it,
We can let God’s spirit thaw out and break up that frozen, uptight clod of resentments and failures we had taken to calling our “selves”,
And start being our real selves in Christ.

To repent is to change our spiritual direction;
to reorient our minds; to just tilt our heads ever so slightly and shift our perspective on this heap of ashes: this short span of time
in which we currently move and breathe.
It’s not a makeover. It’s not a diet.
It’s not a costume of piety and prayer we wear for forty days, hoping to fool God and others.
It’s a return to the authentic selves God made.
Young or old, we don’t know how many more ashes will touch our foreheads.
We don’t know how many more times we’ll start this walk, down this dusty road of Lent.
What we do know is each time we do it,
Each time Christ reminds us of our true selves in him, it’s a practice run for the last dawn:
The day when we’ll wake up, we’ll feel warmth and light in the East, and this last time, it won’t be the rising sun, but the sun of righteousness: the light of Christ.
We’ll wake up, newly made, raised from death, like Jesus was, a new creation, formed once again from the infinite potential
Of dust.
Let us return, and thank God that you and I
Are dust.
Dust together.
Dust infused with, and loved by,
and reconciled to God.
Amen.

Practicing Love

"Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive." Colossians 3:13

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Romans 12:9-13

I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. John 15:17

This will be a short one, but I need to get this off my chest.

It occurs to me that no small portion of the New Testament is devoted to how Christians ought to treat one another. Almost all of Paul's letters close with exhortations about how to live together as a believing community. Sometimes (as in Philippians 4)he even names names of particular people who need to "up their game" in the love department. Jesus in Matthew 18 sets out a great roadmap for healthy communication between members of a Christian community. And John (both in the Gospel of John and the letters of John) harps incessantly on the theme "love one another." Does this mean you shouldn't also love your neighbor who's not a Christian? Of course not. Does it mean we should focus on loving other Christians and ignore loving our enemies? Um, No, no, double-no! What it means is that, just as we learn how to be a spouse and parent from our family of origin, we learn how to love others in the outside world by practicing on fellow Christians.

And yet...

Our history is pretty rough. Most of what we know about the second- and third-century "heresies" is from the nasty attack ads from the ones who were eventually known as "orthodox" Christians. The second most violent time in the modern era (in pure numbers, taking a back seat only to the First and Second World Wars) is the early 17th century, in which Europe was almost entirely populated by Christians killing other Christians for being the wrong kind of Christian.

And even today, I read more than I care to about this or that pastor, priest, or political pundit who's a complete and total moron for interpreting scripture in a way that's different from how "we" interpret scripture. My facebook feed is blown up with wholesale, ad hominem rants against those cruel, bigoted, inhuman monsters who are so awful at loving their neighbors. It's become a game of "how extremely can I diss and distance myself from my brothers and sisters in Christ", in the hope that all the "nones" who realize we're not "that kind" of Christian, will come running to us and join us in our important work of vilifying the other side.

I've also heard from far too many faithful clergy persons who are being attacked, undermined, sniped at behind their back, and thrown into emotional and spiritual turmoil on a daily basis for the heinous crime of answering God's call to preach and administer the sacraments, loving God's people, and telling them what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. Folks are being bullied; it's way more common than anybody wants to admit, and it's why rates of depression and substance abuse for Christian clergy are way higher than the average population.

It's time for this nonsense to stop. It's time to be the kind of community, the kind of family, that a normal, sane person might truly want to be adopted into. It's time to let our light shine so that others will see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven. It's time to start loving social conservatives as much as we wish they loved LGBT folks. It's time to start loving theological conservatives as much as we wish they loved persons of other faiths. It's time to start loving Christians on the right as much as we wish they loved folks on the left, and vice versa. And as Jesus taught us, love doesn't always mean agree with, but it can and often does mean sit down and eat with. It does not mean advocating for, but it often does mean listening to. It doesn't mean never criticizing, but it does mean sharing the light of the truth as we've come to know it, with the particular people whose perspective we see as darkened by prejudice.

You want to try loving your enemy this week? Let's try something less convenient that Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin or Viktor Yanukovych halfway across the globe, who are indeed hard to love, but who for most of us exist more as concepts than people. What about loving the person who tried to "save your soul" by putting a Chick Pamphlet under your windshield, or by swallowing their nerves and knocking on your door to share their version of the Gospel, even if you find that version offensive? Or how about this...

What about loving our pastors? What about praying for them not just when they're on the right track, but when they seem to be having some trouble? Not just when they're hitting it out of the park, but when they're striking out? Not just when they agree with our concerns, but when they challenge us to look at things differently?

Let's try this love thing, and let's practice on each other. Let's see if by God's help, we can make God's house look like a place folks would like to be.