Category: Faith

It’s not every day that an article posted by a Lutheran makes me yell at my screen like I’m watching Fox News but this one did today. I’ll admit that, on the yell-so-loud-I-disturb-my-pets scale, this barely registered at a point five (out of ten). Yet I feel like the post (originally posted at Country Preacher’s Corner) needs a response mostly because it contains foundational assumptions about the nature of the health care debate that are slightly off and those assumptions need to be nipped in the bud.

Now, I’m actually glad that the Country Preacher stated his assumptions at the very front of his post. He writes:

What does Lutheran theology teach about compassion, charity, and giving? That is the ultimate question when it comes to the Church’s role in society.

His basic assessment is to see the Church’s role in society through the lens of compassion, charity, and giving. Through this lens, it makes sense to go in direction he does. By focusing on the role of the Church, he traps himself within the framework of individual responsibility. The responsibility of the Church is reduced to the responsibly of the individual member of the Church. By reducing the focus of the argument to the individual, the author continues to follow the rabbit hole down by looking at the relationship between God and the individual which is defined by grace. However, as Lutherans, one cannot only talk about grace because the opposite side of that coin is the law. And that’s the big problem with starting the argument about health care with the notion of giving because you eventually end up at the law and, through the problem of language, the author (and I think people in general) misidentify the laws established by government with the law as defined by Paul. The argument leads to a very un-Lutheran place because it forgets who we are in our relationship with God. Because Lutherans hyper-focus on God’s grace, we are forced to contextualize ourselves in our relationship with that grace. And that contextualization ends up in the spot where Martin Luther found himself centuries ago: that we are both justus et peccator. There is a danger when we only use the language of justus (grace/justification/and other churchy words) and forget peccator (you know, that whole sinner thing). We are justified by grace through faith but we live lives as creatures that need God’s grace to be changed. There is nothing that we can do through our own will, efforts, thoughts, beauty, or awesomeness, to change the fact that we are grounded in a state of sin. We wish to be God, to have God’s control, and the only way to have that change is to have God come down and work on us. In this life, that process and experience is never completed but, because God is gracious, we are never left alone to walk through this life even if it feels like we are.

So what does that have to do with the new health care legislation? Well, first off, a Lutheran approach to the healthcare debate can’t only focus on giving because that is only half of our experience as human beings. Even though, through baptism, we are changed, we are still human beings. We’re still going to screw up. We’re still going to believe that we have ultimate control over ourselves, our world, and our relationship with God. And to handle the reality of our existence as people who live in the world, Lutherans preach a theology of the Two Kingdoms. To quote the Augsburg Confession, Article 28, in a conversation about the Church’s Power (The Book of Concord, Kolb & Wengert 2000, translation from the German):

Therefore, since this power of the church bestows eternal things and is exercised only through the ministry of he Word, it interferes with civil government as little as the art of singing interferes with it. For civil government is concerned with things other than the gospel. For the magistrate protects not minds but bodies and goods from manifest harm and constrains people with the sword and physical penalties. The gospel protects minds from ungodly ideas, the devil, and eternal death.
Consequently, the powers of church and civil government must not be mixed. The power of the church possesses its own command to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments. It should not usurp the other’s duty, transfer earthly kingdoms, abrogate the laws of magistrates, abolish lawful obedience, interfere with judgments concerning any civil ordinances or contracts prescribe to magistrates laws concerning the form of government that should be established….In this way our people distinguish the duties of the two powers, and they command that both be held in honor and acknowledged as a gift and blessing of God. p.93

Now, at first glance, it would seem that Country Preacher hedged his bets by claiming that: “The U.S. Congress can do what it wants within the limits of the Constitution.” And this is correct (to a degree) and seems to be supported by the quote from the Augsburg Confession above. But the key, I think, about Country Preacher’s argument is that by framing the health care debate through the lens of “individual giving,” the debate becomes one about authority, specifically the relationship between the individual’s choice and government authority to interfere with that choice. To reduce healthcare to an individual choice, the argument defaults to a current societal trend that most choices in life (including salvation) should be punted to the individual. Healthcare, like education, careers, relationships, love, life, and everything else is reduced to being the individual’s responsibility. The corporate nature of our relationships to one another as being part of a society is brushed aside. And that’s a problem with Lutheranism because we have, at our core, an expression of corporate identity in the Gospel and the Two Kingdoms. The corporate responsibility of government (and society) – the Left Kingdom in the Lutheran scheme of the Two Kingdoms – is completely ignored. The health care debate, as it is currently framed and assumed in Country Preacher’s argument, is a battle over authority, corporate responsibility, and the notion of what it means to part of a corporate body. And it’s also an argument that is grounded in the assumption that all individuals are merely justus and have the opportunity to control their own individual reality. And that is not part of the Lutheran identity. Rather, the amazing thing about God’s grace is not that Christ died for others but that Christ died for me too. And by dying for me, in our baptism, we are brought into a social identity that is bigger than ourselves. Sin is that we believe, act, and define ourselves as God. Being baptized into Christ and the Church is the claim that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Built within a Lutheran Christian identity is a notion of corporate identity that is rooted in this world (with all the problems that come from that reality). The Healthcare debate, as I see it, is an issue of authority and whether the government has the responsibility, as the Augsburg Confession puts it, to protect “bodies…from manifest harm.” Those bodies include all bodies – including ones that are not young, healthy, and just like mine. Included in the government’s responsibility is to care for all bodies – those that are sick, lower class, poor, rich, athletic, and out of shape. And since the Augsburg Confession says, that government is one of the “highest blessings of God on earth,” then our question becomes which bodies will be included in our corporate identity and which will not. Once we answer this question, we can then decide, as a Church, whether to endorse any of the Healthcare systems on the table.

For those of you who didn’t know, I grew up in Colorado. I loved it there and still miss it even though I have been on the East Coast for about as long as I lived in the Centennial State. But I’ll always be a Western kid at heart. It’s been heart breaking seeing all the fires that are raging across my home state. Not only are they destroying places and trees, but homes have been destroyed as well. The fire that is bulldozing through the outskirts of Colorado Springs is just the most frightening one out of several so far this month. I spent all day refreshing Denver Post and reading all the twitter feeds I could. The picture above was taken this afternoon by Alli Smith and shared via twitter. It shows the chapel at the Air Force Academy lit up by a background of fire and smoke. You can even see the fire from space. As I hear about friends of friends and the family members of friends being evacuated and not sure if their homes are still around, my heart aches for them. My prayers go out to everyone there – to those who have lost their homes and to those who are fighting the fires in the face of high temperatures, high winds, and bone dry climate conditions. It brings to mind the valley of the dry bones. And I pray that, like that valley, that God’s mercy, grace, and love will bless all those affected by these fires and the fires that are to come.

Update: Even the Denver Broncos are getting in on the relief act.

side note: the title of this post reminds me of Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus or Party in the ELCA.

The ELCA might not be the best when it comes to Social Media but some of us are trying. Augsburg Fortress recently posted two blog entries about who tweets for the ELCA. I count 31 synods (less than half) and a number ELCA social organizations that I follow. One problem is, sadly, that a number of those organizations are a little too…quiet. I’m being ironic, of course, because I am involved in a few church facebook pages that I rarely update – it is something I need to get better at. But there is something positive and effect about using social media to broadcast what it is that the synods, organizations, and the churches are doing. It does not mean, of course, that everyone will get your message or that it might be the most efficient way for our presence to make a difference in the world. But twitter and other social media tools can serve as a method of showing to people that church, as we define it, is being done. I’m going to follow up this post with another one about the joy of arriving late to church (and what that can teach us) but I’ve been mulling over a question: on Sunday morning, do the people who drive or walk by your building know that church is being done inside? In a city like New York, that’s a hard question to answer because we are use to not noticing things. I don’t think we, who are inside the walls, can assume that people will KNOW that we’re actually gathering together in worship. It might seem like a strange idea (can’t people read the sign?) but I think if we’re not able to effectively outreach that we are actually doing church when we are doing it, then how can we expect ourselves to be effective at doing outreach during the 98% of the week when we’re not gathered together?

Preached by the Seminiarianzilla at Trinity LIC.
June 17, 2012
3rd Sunday after Pentecost: Mark 4:26-34; 2 Corinthians 5:6-17; Ezekiel 17:22-24

At the beginning of this chapter of Mark, we have Jesus teaching by the sea. And after teaching to a large crowd, he retreats to where it is only him and his disciples. And the disciples, well, they’re confused – they want to hear more – more lessons and parables – so Jesus gives them a few more – and they all seem to deal with being a farmer.

Now, I didn’t grow up on a farm and the only yard work I would do was a little weeding now and again. But I remember, when I was in elementary school, there was this science experiment that we would do every year. We’d get to a segment where we were learning about ecosystems, or the environment, or why trees didn’t grow at the top of mountains but they do at the bottom – and everyone would be given the same materials – a ziplock bag, a wet brown paper towel that felt like sandpaper, some masking tape, and one big lima bean. We’d all take that big old bean, put it in the zip lock bag, shove in the wet paper towel, seal it, and tape those bags onto whatever window in our classroom would get the most sun. A few days later, we’d come back, find our bags, and look to see what changed. And if we were lucky – if we did everything right, we had enough water on our paper towel (but not too much), and if we sealed it correctly so it didn’t dry out – we’d see sprouts! These little white and green appendages would snake away from the bean. We’d all be so excited – and the teacher would corral us with our bags of a bean, and we’d get a styrofoam cup, ome soil, and pot it. And I remember taking it home, all proud, and telling my mom and dad about the plant, and how I was going to water it, and I’d put it on the windowsill, and make sure it gets lots of sun, so it can grow big. Because I had learned, through that experiment, what it took to get this little seed to sprout. I was a little farmer in the great wilds of suburbia.

There’s something powerful in that image – in that little experiment. We have this group of little kids, all full of life, and full of so much potential – they’re like seeds – and they’re all working to tend to these little seeds themselves – so that these seeds can grow up. It’s an amazing metaphor for childhood. So, I think, when we read today’s parables from Jesus – don’t we kind of go back to that experiment – or any experience we’ve had trying out our green thumbs? When we read about the mustard seed – that is sown in the ground – and it grows into this shrub that is big, and safe, that birds fly into it to make it their home – it’s hard to not be inspired. It’s hard not to see ourselves as those seeds. We know what’s important when it comes to nourishment, tending, weeding, providing the plant with just the right amount of water, the right amount of sun, so that it can grow into the plant it is suppose to be. We know how plants grow. We know how seeds work. And that seed – it is no longer a metaphor for us, but it becomes us. We are that seed.

The church encourages this, I think. The parable of the mustard seed – it’s a parable that appears everywhere. We use that image to inspire us to do great things. It is the story we use for our capital campaigns for new buildings or to repair old ones, or themes for bible studies and vacation bible schools, and for our faith development classes when we try to learn to be more faithful Christians. We’re the mustard seed, we tell ourselves, but even though we are seeds, we are farmers too. We know how seeds become plants – how their stalks are formed, how much water they need, how much sun they need. So we know how much to sacrifice so that we can raise money to fix our roof. And we know what kind of bible studies to run so that people can recognize God’s presence in their lives. And we know the right games to play and songs to sing so that our children can grow in Christ. We are able to do amazing, wonderful, powerful, prayerful, and faithful things with these images. Many of us actually do change because of these things – we become more faithful – we feel as if we are better Christians than we were before. We feel that our branches are longer, our leaves bigger, our shade darker and cooler – we become energized! We feel like we can reach any of our goals. We set visions for who we are, for where we want to go, and we reach them. Sure, it might be hard work, and it might take time, energy, and a re-prioritizing of our lives – but we become that shrub. We feel more holy. We feel more Godly! And it is a powerful thing to see, to feel, and to witness too.

But what happens when that doesn’t happen? If, in our campaign to fix the building, no grant came through – no one attended our bake sales or the rummage sale – and no one donated. Or, if in our bible studies, we went, we read, we studied, we engaged in conversation – and nothing changed. I mean, in many ways, we will always be seeds – always waiting to reach our full potential – never fully complete and whole and everything that we should be – but that thinking is abstract because what about those days when we feel like we’ll only, always, be a seed – and that the growth that we see promised in these parables that Jesus said – that Jesus spoke to his disciples – what about when we don’t feel it? What about when we know we’ve done everything right and it just doesn’t seem to work. Where does Jesus’s words leave us then?

And that’s tough – tough and not something I have a ready answer for. Because I think we all feel that way at one time or another. Even me, the clergy-in-training, feels this way. As I go through the process of being that prayerful, powerful, spiritual leader – that person worthy of wearing this collar, or these vestments, or to have the honor to preach to you – I sometimes wonder if I’ll become that shrub that others can find rest and security in. And on this day when we honor fathers, and as I get ever so close to being one myself – how do I take that new life, nourish it, raise it, and help him reach his full potential? And no matter how many people tell me how great that I will be, how it will work out, I wonder if I’m really ready or maybe if I’m just a mustard seed pretending to be what I’m not. These are questions, and worries, and wonderings. And, it’s not fun – not something that I want – because i want that confidence that Paul writes, in his letter to the Corinthians – that boasting that he shares. I want that – and, I think, we all need that too.

And maybe that’s the problem with seeing ourselves as the seeds in these parables. Maybe weren’t not suppose to see ourselves as the seeds. What would happen if, instead of seeing ourselves as the seeds that are scattered, that the little thing that is so full of potential – what if we took a look at these parables again, and we put ourselves in a different place. What if we identified ourselves with that anyone, that person who throws the seeds, who isn’t a farmer, who doesn’t know what’s going on – and we look again at Mark 4, verse 28, and read that “the earth produces of itself.” Because that anyone – they never did that experiment I did as a little kid – they never learned what it was needed for a seed to grow. That anyone didn’t even know how to plant a seed correctly! Instead, they just threw it and went about their lives. They didn’t take responsibility for its growth – but the ground did. The ground took that seed, nourished it, provided it with what it needed to grow; all of that – that was the ground’s responsibility – not the anyone. For that seed – it is the ground that mattered – that earth that was important. That is what made the seed reach its potential – a potential that, in the end, was fully shared with the anyone who didn’t grow it correctly in the first place!

That, I think, is the ground for Paul’s confidence. That lack of being responsible for the seed – for its growth – that’s Paul confidence and our confidence too. Because what mattered was the earth, creation itself – that which God gave. God provided the environment for the kingdom to grow – and the anyone had little to do with it. Paul’s confidence rests in what God does – and what Jesus is really promising here, I think, is that the kingdom will come, that the kingdom is coming – and the kingdom doesn’t depend on anything that we do. It doesn’t matter how good of a farmer we believe we need to be – or how tightly we seal the ziplock bag in our lives to keep the good things in – no – the kingdom does not depend on us. It only depends on God – and God’s work – and what God did through Christ on the Cross.

It’s through that Cross – that gruesome symbol of death and suffering – the exact opposite of the new life in our parables today – that paradoxical ground defines who we are brothers and sisters in Christ. In Jesus’s death, we all died – we were planted into the earth. And in Jesus’s raising, we are all raised as new creations! It is in our baptisms that we are joined with Christ – in that external act, when water is poured over us when we are young, or old, baby, or adult – that confidence is Paul’s confidence and it’s our confidence – because we are grounded in what God has done, and God continues to do – bringing new life through Grace and Love in this and every place. When it comes to the parable of the mustard seed that becomes the large shrub – I think it is better to see us not as the seed that grew but as the birds that nest. Because it is in the works of God that we find our rest, our security, our shade, and our joy.

Our confidence, then, doesn’t rest in what we do – or how we feel – or what we need to do. That kingdom of God – that thing that God does – our confidence, our trust, our faith – it rests in the promise. That is what sustains us even when we doubt, struggle, and even when we feel like we’ll always only be a seed, trapped in a poorly sealed ziplock bag, and all the moisture has dried up. Because our confidence rests in God’s promise that – regardless of who we are, in baptism we have died with Christ and we have been raised with Christ too. Our confidence is that we have been loved – claimed and gathered by God. And it is there, by being claimed by God, that I think we fully become like birds. We are made free – free to act as if the kingdom of God does not depend on us; free to act as if that shrub does not depend on what we do, or control, or on how good of farmers we can be. We are free instead to do that which can seem so impossible sometimes – we are free to turn outside ourselves – to look to our neighbors, our family, our friends, and complete strangers – and love them, walk with them, help them, honor them – and raise them up as we have been raised. Because it’s that love of Christ – that love that is given to us – that is what urges us on. That love of Christ, to be a voice for the voiceless, to feed the hungry, to fight against all forms of oppression and discrimination – that love – that love is given to us, freely, without charge, and is the ground of who we are as Christians. We are free to love – in fact, we are called to love – to be that light in the world – to help the seeds around us grow and every bird to find safety and shelter. Because that promise of Christ – that the Kingdom of God will come, and that it does not depend on us but that its bounty is for us – that’s what it means to be loved – that’s what it means to be seen by God as being worth being loved – and that’s what we boast and proclaim – because we are free to live as if God has taken charge, no matter how small we think we truly are.

Amen.

The animated gif is 25 years old! In its honor, I will share something that I’m sure I’ve shared before. And since I’m failing at writing a sermon right now (can’t not get a clear path through this Sunday’s reading from Mark) I figured that you should all live in my distractions and read what I’m sure I’ve shared on facebook before: Ordinary Batman Adventures.

One of my favorites:

On Sunday, I visited my internship site/field education church for worship. Even though I am on “summer break,” I still feel the need to make an appearance there every once in awhile (and it helps that it is much closer to where I live than my home church). I show up to meetings there too, prepping myself for upcoming year. And it’s interesting to watch as the congregation nears the implementation phase of its strategic plan. As my thoughts swirl around that process, I see a nice tie in with this article about “young adults” and the church that has just started making the rounds on my facebook feed.

Now, there’s quite a bit that I disagree with this article. I mean, I understand why the author gets upset about the behavior of the gentleman who told the Sunday School kids to quiet down during the sermon. I understand how the author sees that as a sign of inter-generational issues inherent in the church. And I get how the author might question the traditional congregational model because, well, that’s the trendy thing to do at the moment. I think the author has too much trust in “young people” by defining them as entrepreneurs because I personally think he mis-understands how growing up with the internet, while it has changed territorial systems, it has not changed the very notion of why those systems exist in the first place. What I mean is that the younger generation, especially those who are computer savvy, middle class, and are accustom to a certain amount of technological know-how and funding, have access to different forms of hierarchy and authority. We’re products of Napster, bit torrent, and free content on the internet. That economy of ideas – where access, free, and where loyalty is different from what it was before, is built, I think, into the fabric of who we are. It is a little different than previous generations anti-older folks (i.e. like the boomers) because the angst and the struggle that define our relationship to the world doesn’t have outwards forms to latch onto. Because we were raised by an anti-establishment generation and told that we should “reach our dreams” through the use of helicopter parents, we’re not afraid to change our position when we feel “uncomfortable.” I think we might be one of the few generations that is more mobile than prior ones (our mountains of debt not withstanding). I don’t think we necessarily understand what we’re doing all the time or that we truly understand the implication of our thought system but it is there and it is the default behavior in a lot of us.

And I think we exhibit this behavior and not really realize we’re doing it. I think it is a flavor of our generation, a norm (again, for a certain class of individual – when the conversation usually comes up about the “church” and the “young,” the young are always defined as middle class, college educated, white collar workers or hipsters that could be that way if they wanted too) that we’ve had bred into us. And I wonder if we’re misidentifying “authenticity” with our own inbred notions of anti-establishmentism. I don’t think all of us are anti-establishment, in the purest sense of the word, but I think we like to envision ourselves as such. I see that in the article I linked above. What I see is not generational conflict but a conflict about leadership, power, and authority, that can be carried within a generational context. At my field site, it is fascinating to see how the strategic plan is forcing, I think, the congregation to own up to its own context and how that context has changed. I think there has been a paradigm shift in who attends, why they attend, and who makes up the congregation – a shift that I don’t know if the congregation consciously sees. But I can see the fights develop as they define who the establishment in the church is. There was always a sense that an establishment exists but I think the strategic plan is forcing the establishment to be thrust into the open. And I think that is making some folks in the congregation uncomfortable because the establishment has changed and that establishment is what gives the church its flavor. I’ve watched that happen at my home congregation too and how it can take years for that change in the establishment to take root, flourish, and bring the church into a new direction. And even in places where that change is acknowledged and understood, like my home congregation, they have to be dragged kicking and screaming into a new place.

When I read Ron’s piece, as much as I see intergenerational issues, I really see establishment issues. It is not that my generation is against the establishment but I think we are against any establishment that does not seem to include us. And this is a problem in all churches, even ones that are run by young adults, because if the access to leadership is restricted, other young people will drop out from that group. We don’t stick around. Authenticity, then, is the option that we are being listened to, accepted, and willing to be invited into the establishment of the church. However, there’s a problem in this model, because my generation will assume that we are entitled to that access of power. And, not only that, we will also assume that the church must, for some reason, fit into our mode of life. We are, I think, a very transient generation (though maybe this is just based on my experience living in New York where, for some reasons, I seem to be the only one who stayed), and we are looking for churches where we will be accepted, included, involved, and comfortable with watching us leave in 18 months time. So, we’re asking for involvement without the risk of legacy, entrenchment, and roots. I think this probably has been an issue for churches forever but it is exasperated in the mainline Protestant churches because our traditional power structures are weakening. We no longer have the numbers to allow ourselves to let the transient generations not serve in the church. Now, the problem with this model is that it is asking a lot out of the people who stay. For other groups (generational, ethnic, political, etc), this assumption of entitlement to power on my generations’ terms is silly and unacceptable. Groups of people that had to wait for their access to the establishment will not tolerate, to many degrees, interlopers who show up out of the blue. And, in many ways, why should they? How does the church take into consideration the different approaches towards leadership, authority, and establishment, that exist in our society? I’m not sure yet but I don’t know if the approach that Ron is advocating is the right one. I don’t think the traditional model of the neighborhood church has vanished. I don’t think it can’t serve a valuable service. In fact, I think it still can. But I do think that bridges between whoever is in the establishment and those not need to be strengthened. I think they need to be acknowledged. And I think even us liberal minded mainstream Protestant denominations need to be open to the fact that we might not be as liberal (when it comes to power) as we pretend to be. Tradition doesn’t need to be buried or destroyed (I think the fact that under 30s don’t want the 1982 Hymnal of the Episcopal Church to be heavily changed shows that the young generations are not afraid of tradition and that, in fact, witnessing to tradition can actually be empowering to those who do not have power) but serious questions of establishment, power, and authority, need to be raised. Whether that is going to happen…well, we’ll see.

I’m not going to lie but I definitely would embrace my hispanic roots and my old greek neighborhood tradition of putting one of these bad boys out in my yard. But could we get a Tony Stark as Doubting Thomas or maybe Peter? Thanks in advance.