No Answers

I'm taking an ethics course. (Maybe that's where I went wrong).

We watched a video today in class of 12 people sitting around a table and discussing ethical concerns. These men and women are lawyers, priests and rabbis and pastors, philosophers, and medical doctors. Matters about cheating, lying, and a host of other matters all debated around the table in their ironed suits.

The issue that created the most heat and difference of opinion was whether to give a dollar to the man begging on the street. I feel like this is a slippery slope, and is certainly a tricky subject for the church.

On the one hand, you have no knowledge of how your dollar, should you offer it, will be spent. That is where the reservations for most people arise. There is of course the common view that the man you give the dollar to will use it to buy booze, but how do you know?

Our call as Christians is to love one another, certainly including those who are looked down on. I’ll be honest and say that I have a hard time giving to panhandlers, and largely do not. I would much rather serve at a soup kitchen, washing dishes, cooking, or otherwise. All the instances of doing that have been on a church mission trip where it seems safe to do so.

But somehow it does not feel very safe to give that dollar to the man on the street, and the resulting thoughts and emotions don't always feel safe either.

When we look outside church walls and to those who ask for our mercy, how should we respond? I want to challenge you by not giving an answer. It is all too easy to think we have all the answers, fill a binder with them, and leave it on the shelf. On that shelf is where it remains for years, never touched.

If we should seek an answer to this question and to any other number of problems that plague our society, it is important that the answers are not given once and for all. The answer must be embodied and we must seek it out daily to have any effectual power.

When we had fallen so far into our sin, it was not the laws on the shelf that saved us but the embodiment of God in Jesus. This daily challenge to live out and be the change we want to see in the world is the only way to change the world.

Robert

THE FEAR and JOY of EASTER

As I came into the week from Palm Sunday to Easter Day, I was very perplexed by the concerns and thoughts of our Outside Church Walls group in trying to determine the role of Community inside and outside our churches to provide a faithful future for the Episcopal Church in Western Washington. What steps would be required to begin the journey? There are no easy answers!

Through an all night vigil after our Maundy Thursday service with the washing of feet, stripping of the Altar and the black draping of the Cross, it came to me that maybe we should be listening to the voices, concerns and prayers of all concerned (the same way that Scrooge in the Christmas stories had to listen to the ghosts of Christmas’ past, present and future) OH MY!

I found fear and joy in a Good Friday prayer this is used for Renewal of Baptismal Vows and Ordinations (Book of Common Prayer, pg 280).

“Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by Him through whom all things were made, your son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen”

While this prayer is poetry and vision, it is also very risky. Oh God please look out for Your Church, not ours, but Yours. Fear and Joy!

The voices of Easter 2014 that spoke to me are:

Scott Gunn (FDxD)

”We can’t soften what Jesus Christ did on Maundy Thursday we must do as He commanded, wash feet, be vulnerable, all pride is tripped away and out Christian charity is laid bare.” Fear and Joy!

Greg Rhodes (4/14/14 OCW)

 “OCW and the Episcopal Church need to make mistakes through action-not inaction. We will make mistakes, but we are already doing that by lost opportunity and inaction. Take a risk, dare, be uncertain, nervous and hopeful. Build action momentum in your congregations and offer it all to God with Fear and Joy.”

Sara Monroe (4/9/14 OCW)

“Good Friday is important in a world like ours. Where American religion is warm and fuzzy and we want to skip the sorrow of Good Friday and go right into Easter. The stripping of the Altar, vigil and walking the Stations of the Cross were incredibly powerful to me. In my life of working with the homeless, they simply have no place to name it in a world drunk with unjust and Good Friday is a place to name the injustice of it all.” Fear and Joy!

Presiding Bishop Katherine Jeffers Schori (message Easter Day 2014) 

“Where and how will be look for the Body of Christ, risen and rising? Will we share the life of that Body as an Easter People, transformed by resurrection, and sent to transform the world in turn?” Fear and Joy!

Our own Bishop Greg in his “Easter Message” states that we must feel, pray and love for all of the peoples whose are hearts are down and saddened this Easter Season by saying “Alleluia” for them. Amen. Fear and Love.

Fr. Dick Loop (Vicar of St. Peter’s, Seaview, WA) in his Easter message 2014, spoke of Mary Magdalene and the Other Mary who went to see “The Tomb” full of fear and joy. They ran, they moved, and went to tell the Deciples. They took action and so must we.

Full of the fear and the joy of Easter...MOVE, RISK, DARE and take ACTIONS to tell all “HE HAS RISEN INDEED”!

Chuck

Mistakes Through Action

Just shy of my 30th birthday I started a new job, one for which I was spectacularly unprepared. A small, family-owned manufacturing firm inked a contract with a new and highly-demanding customer that would triple the size of the company – if all went well. If it went poorly, the company might well fail.

Other than a college summer working on the floor of a paper processing plant, I had no experience in manufacturing, but now I was responsible for a new plant and new employees. The task was clear: get the product out on time, on budget and on spec.

My new boss gave me an important piece of advice: make mistakes based on action rather than inaction. In other words, doing nothing is a choice, and probably a bad one. Becoming frozen in the trap of waiting for perfect decisions or more information would likely lead to failure.

We need this advice in the Episcopal Church: make mistakes through action rather than inaction. Many people are hoping someone (Outside Church Walls, the national church, the diocese, etc.) will publish a manual with the definitive answer to revitalization. They’re waiting for it, afraid to make changes or take actions in case they turn out to be wrong.

Unfortunately, there is no single answer; our time and place are too complicated for a one-size approach. As we wait, we’re losing time. We’re passing up opportunities to serve and impact the people around us. As congregations struggle they become more focused on revitalization or survival rather than on serving God’s purpose in our context.

Waiting or acting each create their own momentum. Action tends to lead to further action. Inaction leads to paralysis. Either is a choice.

We’ll certainly make some mistakes. Some congregations might not survive. But we’re already making mistakes of inaction, of lost opportunity. If we do nothing there are congregations that won’t survive. (And, congregational survival is not the end goal, though we desire it. Serving and worshipping God is the purpose.)

The take-away is this: do something. Take a risk, a little bigger than you really dare. Be uncertain, nervous and hopeful. Offer it to God, knowing that God can do something with the outcome. Build some action momentum in your congregation.


Greg

Good Friday Squares Off with Joel Osteen

Raised in American evangelicalism, I was no stranger to Easter or to Christmas or even to Advent. But, Lent, not so much. No Ash Wednesday. And, really, not much of a Good Friday. A hallmark of American religion is skipping anything that smacks of death or sorrow and jumping to Easter and hope. We can’t bear to “be negative.” Which means that the first time I watched the stripping of the altar, sat a vigil, or walked the stations of the cross was incredibly powerful for me.

Barbara Ehrenreich, in her book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, argues that Americans have been lured into “positive thinking” by pop psychology, encouraged to always look on the bright side and taught that positive thinking brings success (all while having the highest consumption of anti-depressants in the world). This, of course translates into our religious life, where we have adopted a Santa in the skies view of God, a God who showers wealth and blessing on those who believe and are positive enough. For those of us who are millennials, especially, this message rings hollow.

It rings hollow in an uncertain or sometimes non-existent job market, rings hollow as we watch our grandparents struggle to get health care, rings hollow as we find it nearly impossible to make ends meet no matter how hard we try.

The deadly danger of our bright theology is that it teaches that job loss, economic crisis, and inability to find stable employment are a result of not being positive enough, not trying hard enough. And we internalize that shame. Ehrenreich writes that, during the economic downturn, Joel Osteen (among many others) told Americans to avoid seeing themselves “as victims” and to stay positive. A convenient philosophy for those in power, but a damning one for young people driven to the streets, to drugs, or to suicide by their “failure” to succeed.

Good Friday squares off with this great lie. Good Friday is not simply a symbol of death and sorrow, not only a memorial of a God made flesh who went so far as to die to enter into solidarity with us. Good Friday is the day God made flesh died at the hands of the power and greed of empire.

This is why Good Friday is so important in a world like our own. We need a place to name what we experience for what it is. In Aberdeen, we need a place to hold our terror and pain in the midst of an economic crisis, closed mills, and tattered tenements. We need a place that names our reality, a reality that is no fault of our own. We need a place that does not tell us to be optimistic, to stay positive, or to believe that positivity leads to success. We need a place that allows us to mourn, yes, and more importantly allows us to name that this crisis is manufactured by those in power; that the system we live in has betrayed us; that allows us to confront the injustice of it all.

Because the young men and women I meet who camp out along the rivers or sleep in unheated apartments do not doubt that their suffering is unjust. They simply have no place to name it as such in a world drunk with fuzzy good feelings and therapeutic diagnoses that hand out pills instead of justice. Good Friday is a place to name the injustice of it all.

Sarah

The strangest place you’ve ever had a God Conversation

Dave came to me recently and said, “George, next month, when its my turn to do formation for our Bishop’s Committee, I want to have a conversation about the strangest place you’ve ever had a God Conversation.”

Dave is a long time member of the congregation that I serve.

He got me thinking about my own encounters with others—both friends and strangers.

My favorite unlikely encounter took place one Christmas Eve.

It was Christmas Eve. The Associate Priest at my congregation and I had just finished our early Eucharist and had a good two hours to kill. Hungry, I decided to take him and a few others out for dinner at a favorite restaurant in a neighboring town.

As we approached the restaurant, we were surprised to find that the business was actually closed on Christmas Eve. We didn’t have a lot of time; we’d have to find another restaurant in the neighborhood to eat. We had a problem however: either the restaurants we tried were packed to gills with a waiting list or they were closed.

Where to go?

Finally we noticed that that the Gay Bar in our town was open with pub fare. We could go there and catch a bit to eat.

So there we were a table of three—two priests in collars walking into a Gay Bar.

I must admit I wondered how people would treat us. What happened next surprised me.

The bar was pretty empty actually. We were noticed right away and almost immediately, people began to come up to us and talk with us: did the church that we belong to accept LGBT people. We explained that we did.

Can you pray with me this man asked us. He was quite young and explained to us with tears in his eyes that his mother had not spoken to him since he had come out last spring. He was alone this Christmas. So right there in the middle of the neighborhood gay bar, we began to pray with him.

Soon, there was another person telling us that her friend sent her over because he had prayed with him. Could we pray with her? Slowly people made their way to our table to pray with us, to ask questions about our church, the Bible; others just wanted to talk. I was amazed at how many broken hearted people I met at the bar that night. So many people just wanted to be heard; others wanted to know that they were loved.

Maybe I should spend every Christmas Eve in a bar; praying with people. Jesus was always going into wild places like enemy territory. I imagine that people found it rather odd to see him converse with people outside the law. Jesus was and is a strange encounter for those that meet him.

What’s your strangest God conversation? The most unlikely place?

I think we need to have a few more strange and unlikely conversations about God.

We might be surprised at what we learn.

George