Thursday, May 29, 2014

The Caged Bird Set Free

Maya Angelou died today. She was a great inspiration to me. She lived part of her early life in Arkansas, my home state, in a world that might as well have been another planet due to the great chasm then, and even now, between the world of white privilege and the world of the African-American in the south. She did in fact, "rise" above that and taught us all.

My wife and I stood in the freezing cold of Washington DC, at the first Clinton Inauguration, and listened to Angelou read her own wonderful poem written for that day, On the Pulse of Morning. When it came out in print, I bought a copy, sent it to her at Wake Forest, with a letter telling her I was from Arkansas, and was so inspired by the poem, and her, and asked if she would sign the book and send it back. I sent it thinking I would never see it again. In about three weeks it came back to me, signed, to my wife and I. She stayed in touch with "the people."

In the 1990 Paris Review, Angelou was asked, "You once told me that you write lying on a made-up bed with a bottle of sherry, a dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, yellow pads, an ashtray, and a Bible. What's the function of the Bible?"

"The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bible, is musical, just wonderful. I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is. Though I do manage to mumble around in about seven or eight languages, English remains the most beautiful of languages. It will do anything," she replied.

The Paris Review reporter then asked, "Do you read it to get inspired to pick up your own pen?"

"For melody. For content also. I'm working at trying to be a Christian and that's serious business," Angelou asserted. "It's like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy—it's serious business. It's not something where you think, 'Oh, I've got it done. I did it all day, hotdiggety.'"

She continued, "The truth is, all day long you try to do it, try to be it. And then in the evening, if you're honest and have a little courage, you look at yourself and say, 'Hmm. I only blew it 86 times. Not bad."

She died at age 86. She may have blown it 86 times, but she made it a real, reality, many, many more times, and inspired us all to remember that Christianity is not something you accomplish, it is not a static state, it is not something you claim and hold or possess. It is instead something you work at, live, try and fail, and though it is the path you have chosen, it is not part of the path to run down those who have chosen another one, or none you recognize at all. In essence she reminded us that when we decide to not love or care for all just because they have not chosen the same path, we have ceased being the very thing we claim, we have ceased practicing the faith we say we love. I believe she took us outside church walls in almost all she shared and wrote. She reminded us that we can claim anything with words, we can stand in beautifully grand and holy monuments to our God, we can sit resolved at our place at the front of the line, and none of it mean a thing in the end. Christianity is a practice. And practice is what we need a lot more of, inside, and outside church walls.


Bishop Greg

Monday, May 19, 2014

The Best Defense Is Offense

As an old football player I was once told by my high school football coach (1952) that if the offense can control the ball and the time clock that is out best defense. I always liked defense more and was still learning in life that a good blocking offensive guard was more valuable!

I want to thank Mary Ann Seward and her take on Bill Harper’s (“Notes From the Vicar of Grace 4/13/14) “Feeling Defensive” along with a 19 page conversation of trivia from OCW crew and others. It reminded me of how defensive we Christians can become...and rightly so! God bless the positive comments coming out of this conversation.

Our last OCW meeting was to talk with someone not connected to Church. It was felt that this perspective was needed about how our beliefs and actions are received by communities and people not directly involved. It was a good discussion, congenial and a lot of similar responses about each other’s views. I best remember out guest’s last question: “WHAT HAVE YOU LOST”? It wasn’t well answered by the defense, but I later thought maybe a little heart and a very weak offense!

We must stop licking our wounds and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ, remember our Baptismal vows and respect the dignity of every human being...and oh yes, score a touchdown!


Chuck

Thursday, May 15, 2014

What Does the Gospel Offer Millennials?

If there is one defining characteristic of Aberdeen, and particularly of its young people, it is probably loss of hope. You can see it in the young men and women who walk with their heads down. You can see it in the high use of drugs and alcohol among millennials in this neck of the woods. You can see it in the young woman I talked with the other day who was checking out my groceries and told me; “No matter what I do, I can’t make it. I’m working two jobs and still living with my parents.”

None of this is particular to Aberdeen—it is replayed all across the country in our towns and cities, from the Rust Belt to the ghettos of Los Angeles, from the decaying rural towns of the Northwest Peninsula to the post-mill towns of Massachusetts.

The story is almost always the same. Young people (and their elders) can’t find work, or they work multiple jobs with low pay. They go to college or they don’t, but 36% of my generation have moved back home with their parents.

This reality comes with tremendous shame. In a culture where worth and value are associated with economic success, a growing number of people fall short. For young people, moving back home is a sure sign of failure and you can see it in their eyes.

In our conversations in Outside Church Walls, I often end up asking myself the same questions: What do we, as the church, offer these people, these young people?

We often seem to think that to get people in our doors or to be relevant to our culture, we need to gloss over our story, we need to make sure we are not too dogmatic, we need to sit with questions instead of offering answers. As much as I appreciate sitting with questions and as opposed as I am to the fundamentalist style dogmatism that makes up so much religious discourse in our country, I wonder if we haven’t thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

When I left fundamentalism, I questioned my faith intensely. I considered abandoning it altogether. Something made me hold on the core of my own faith and, in time, I joined the Episcopal Church.

In the Episcopal church, I found a different tendency—such a deep fear of dogmatism that people were sometimes afraid of taking a stand on anything, of even articulating a gospel at all. In our last meeting, we were asked this provocative question: “What have you lost?”

If we lose our story, if we lose the gospel, then we become nothing more than a slightly religious liberal social club that does some nice charity and advocacy work. And the young men and women I know do not need—heck, I do not need—a nice club that cares about us.

There is a line we quote often, from our baptismal covenant, where we vow to respect the dignity of every human being. This vow is not a warm, gushy sentiment as much as it is a solid biblical theology. Rooted in a God who created us in the divine image. A God who was incarnated as a human being in Jesus, affirming our dignity. A God who joined us in our suffering and in our pain—who was born to poor parents on the edge of empire, who lived as a wandering prophet with nowhere to lay his head, who died imprisoned and executed by the Roman state—a God in solidarity with us. A God who was resurrected in power, in defiance of the powers of this world, and who promised us resurrection life.

No more, no less is what we can offer— and what we stand to lose.

In a world that tells our young people that they are failures, that their worth and dignity are contingent on an economic success less and less possible, the Christian gospel offers dignity. It offers a God who has entered into our experience. It offers a God who stood up to the powers that be and won. In other words, it is a gospel that offers hope—not because some nice people at church care about us, but because God is on our side.

It is this gospel that allowed me to keep my faith those years ago. It is this gospel that we have to offer, if we will only preach it.


Sarah

Monday, May 12, 2014

New vs Old and Familiar

I have a friend who wants a new car, one that more closely meets the needs of her current life. However, she’s hesitant to give up the old one, because she knows where all the buttons and knobs are. She doesn’t have to think about how to turn on the lights when it gets dark, or run the wipers when it’s raining. This little problem has kept her from making a decision for more than a year.

We have this problem times 1,000 in the church. We don’t just know where all the buttons and knobs are – we love our church. Over time we have fit ourselves to it, and it to us. It seems just about right, if possibly a little empty. Letting go of our old church in order to have a new one that better suits the times is not an easy process.

Last week I heard Dr. Diana Butler Bass speak in Seattle. She’s a leading thinker about the future of the church. Dr. Bass shared a revelation she had about a year ago. As she traveled around the country speaking to groups about the church, over and over again she encountered the deep grief people were feeling about the loss of the parts of church that had been so important to them. The revelation wasn't the grief, but the way Bass herself was taking it on, how it was affecting her physical and emotional health. She had to take steps to ground herself in the midst of all that grief.

We have grief we need to recognize and process. Each of us can’t move on without doing so. We also have to recognize that our grief can infect and affect others, particularly our leaders. We need them to acknowledge our grief, but we can’t expect them to carry it for us, nor should we want them to linger there with us. We need them to look forward, to that place beyond the grief where there is hope and abundant life. It is the promise of our faith.


Greg

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Questions

I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?” Mother Teresa

Tomorrow our Outside Church Walls group will gather for its monthly meeting. We will be blessed at this meeting to have a guest join us to share their perspectives on church. The unique thing about this guest, compared to others we have heard from, is that they are someone who is not connected to church at all.

Some people may wonder what someone who is not part of any church could teach our group. I am eager to hear, learn, and grow through our conversation, and know that I will have my eyes opened. The quote above, which is at the top of our agenda for the day, sums up why.

As Christians and church members, we seek to show the world Christ’s love. We hope to impact our communities in large and small ways, every day, by being the feet and hands of Christ. But how do we know whether we are really doing so? How can we learn how our beliefs and actions affect others outside the church?

It seems that to answer these questions, we must hear from people outside our circle. I am excited to hear the answers to questions such as: What kind of encounters do you have with churches and Christians? In what ways is your life impacted by the church? If a church were a valuable part of the community in which you live, what would that look like?

What questions would you want to ask?


Kelly

Sunday, May 4, 2014

But who do you say that I am

“But who do you say that I am?” ~ Jesus of Nazareth
Matthew 16:15 - 16, Mark 8:29, Luke 9:20, John 6:69 (NIV)

I ask you, my fellow Christians, in this Easter Season, as we again remember and celebrate the life and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the one we name our Christ - the Anointed One - is this the Jesus in whom you believe? In His Resurrection in this Season, I wonder – just wonder – what Jesus of Nazareth would think of us, the Christian people and of our holy, catholic and apostolic church, founded to carry on his Good News. What have we done, and what are we doing now in His name?

I will not leave the church, and my heart is sorely troubled. Given the hyperbole in “Remembering Jesus at Easter”; this is the Jesus I want to remember and to follow as the Anointed One. What about you? Who do you say He is?



MaryAnn

Thursday, May 1, 2014

On the other side of the door

I went to our church in Darrington on Good Friday, Church of the Transfiguration. After the Stations of the Cross and Good Friday services, and pie and coffee with all those who call this church home, I began my preparations to make the long, nearly three hour "trip around" that is necessary now due to the Oso mudslide. While Janet Loyd, Vicar of Transfiguration, and I were standing out by my car before my departure, a young couple, most likely high school age, came walking by, and came up to us and asked, "we were just wondering, why are all the cars at the churches today, it's Friday?" And so we introduced ourselves and told them about Good Friday and Holy Week. They proceeded to tell us they walked by this church all the time, and especially he, kept looking at the church, and the front door, and finally, I asked, "do you all want to see the inside of the church? " And they both said, "yes, we walk by it all the time and we have never looked inside."

"Well, the door is open, go right in, and if you have any questions, let us know. Stay as long as you like." And they did, and they stayed, for quite a while. When they emerged, they talked some more, and Janet realized that the young woman was one of her elementary students from some years back, and they hugged, and Janet said, you know Sunday is Easter, why don't you come to the service and join us. "We might just do that" they said. And then they joined hands, and walked on. It made me wonder if we ought to stand outside the church building more often, just stand there, greeting, answering questions. I thought of my church in Austin, Texas, the last church where I was Rector before being elected bishop. We, every year, had a huge motorcycle convention in Austin, over 10,000 bikers would come to town. We decided to put up, all during those days, on our lighted sign in front of the church, "Bikers Welcome" And you know I don't ever remember one actually coming to church, but what we did remember, all during those days, whether sitting in my office, or even when we were in church, we would hear those big engines roar by, and we would hear the honks, the honk of "thanks" "back at ya"

We seem to measure success in the church only if they cross our threshold, and not the other way around. Success, if there is such a thing, is really in making the connection. The introduction on the street, the honk of the bikers going by, making the door open. The point may not be getting people to cross that threshold, but instead making sure they know they can, whenever they need it.


Bishop Greg