A Haunting Question
I once knew a minister who retired in the 1960’s, but who then served as the pastor of a Disciples church for 20-some years. By the time I knew him, a few years following his second retirement, he was pretty long in the tooth.

The old man soon became severely debilitated, and on the days when I went and sat with him in his bedroom as he wavered between awareness and something else, he sometimes suddenly looked at me and asked, “What is grace?”

It was a haunting question, I thought, because I never once assumed he wanted my definition. Rather, it seemed to me he was trying to sort it out for himself after more than 90 years of life, mostly spent mediating grace to others. I don’t know whether he ever found peace about that. But, up to the end of his life it was on his mind, even when it was difficult to decipher his other thoughts.

We easily get caught up in acting as if God’s love for us were dependent upon our doing something to earn it, measuring up to a standard of acceptability. We can forget that right now. We never will succeed.

I think what God wants most from us is a relationship. The grace comes in God’s willingness to embrace us as we turn to God, admitting our weakness, confessing our dependence on God for all things, and trying to understand how our lives might reflect God’s love as we relate to others.

God’s grace is an on-going reality and blessing, leaving us room even to make mistakes and fail as we try faithfully to grow spiritually, opening our hearts to God’s presence in our lives.

It’s something that blossoms through our entire lives.

What's On Your List?
One time a man asked me to visit his pre-teen son who was recovering from an illness. I arrived at their home and was introduced to the son for the first time. As we began to talk, Brian asked, “What do you believe?” I thought it was kind of an odd question from a twelve year old, but my response was, “Well, I believe Jesus is God’s son and is the savior of the world.” Brian said, “No; I mean do you believe you can smoke or drink?”

Another time I spoke on the telephone with a man who was the chair of a search committee that was considering me as a candidate to be the pastor of their church. Even though we simply were talking about plans for my visiting the church, he said, “I have a question I always like to ask the ministers we interview: Do you believe in the Virgin Birth?”

“Do you believe the Bible is inerrant?” That one comes up, too, in some interviews. “What is the Disciples’ stand on homosexuals,” I have been asked by folks thinking of attending the church. On it goes. Doctrinal issues, moral or behavioral questions, thorny social concerns – it seems everyone has their laundry list of what is important concerning a church or a minister.

So many churches are bogged down in managing the business of the organization, they long ago forgot why they formed as a congregation. Patterns of behaviors are learned and ingrained, and newcomers can’t figure out what’s going on, or why. Some congregations defiantly promote "values" that must be embraced lest the flames of hell begin their devastating consumption.

It seems to me the love of God, as revealed and expressed in Jesus Christ is the foundation of Christian fellowship. Worshiping God, living with thankful hearts for the blessings God so abundantly bestows upon humanity, responding to the call of Jesus to share those blessings and that love with others all link us together with fellow believers and inspire our ministry to people around us.

To me, this encourages freedom from all that separates people, instead drawing us together, as I believe, God intends.

I Was Glad When They Said Unto Me
People walk into churches with all manner of thoughts and ideas in their minds. I remember as a young child, I was apprehensive about going into the sanctuary at church, because I was told in Sunday school the church was the House of God. That seemed somewhat intimidating to my young mind.

One Sunday decades later, as I was standing at the communion table during worship, I picked up the chalice to say the words of institution for the cup. As I looked out at the congregation, I saw a young man walking toward me down the center aisle. He started shouting, “Shut up (expletives deleted)!” When he got near the table, I said, “Do you have a problem?” He replied, “Yes,” and started on some rant about parking (this was an urban church). Before he could move any closer, several men grabbed this person and carried him out a side door. The police already were on their way, as a few folks in the pews put their cell phones to use.

On another day in another church, my wife was rehearsing with a gospel choir. A street person wandered in, sat down in a pew, and listened. During a break in the rehearsal, the street person got up and walked down the aisle. Mary said that a number of the choir members later expressed their thoughts at that moment, “Here it comes. He wants money.” When the street person reached the front of the sanctuary, he took a few coins from his pocket, laid them on the communion table and said, “Your music has been a blessing to me.” Then, he turned and walked out of the church, his spirits lifted.

What’s on your mind when you step into a church building, either the sanctuary on Sunday morning, a meeting room on another day, or the church office? Are you looking for a blessing? Are you copping an attitude? Are you in awe of the mighty presence and power of God?

Or is it something else?

Heading For The Hills
OK, these are the rules:

1. Try to appear as large as possible.
2. Don't try to take anything back from them.
3. Never get between a mother and her cub.
4. Bang on pots and pans and otherwise make a lot of noise.
5. If you're scared, don't run, just back away slowly.

If you're scared??

We drove into the mountains of California yesterday, first going though the Sequoia National Forest, ending up in King's Canyon National Park, in the High Sierras. We are booked into a lodge for two nights.

The rules above are some of what to do if you have an encounter with a bear. If it's a cougar you meet up with, do virtually the same, except there's an additional rule: If attacked, fight back!

I'm not making that up!

So far, the only wildlife we've run into are several chipmunks and a beautiful bird, new to us, the Steller's Jay. One had his eye on some cashews I was munching as I sat on the porch of the lodge. Sorry, pal. I'm not supposed to feed the wildlife.

Mountain driving is not something I'm fond of, especially the way back down. Fortunately, every time I've done it I was using a rental car, rather than taxing the transmission and brakes of my own vehicle. (Hey, wait a minute! My car was a rental before I bought it!)

In any case, the splendor of God's creation, in all of it's diversity, can take your breath away if you stop to appreciate it.

It helps, also, to follow the rules, treating it with respect and gentleness.

Faith and Reason?
The president of a Southern Baptist seminary has reassured the world that homosexuality is “still a sin,” but he allowed that there is some chance homosexuality has a “biological causation.”

According to an interview with Reuters during the recent Southern Baptist Convention in San Antonio, Albert Mohler “said his view on the possible biological basis for homosexuality was based on the notion that ‘... all creation has fallen and bears the marks of sin and that would certainly include the genetic code.’”

“‘If there are causal factors we shouldn't be shaken by that. That doesn't change our understanding of the sinfulness of homosexuality because that is not established by biology but rather by the Bible,’ Mohler said, adding that Christians needed to show compassion to sinners.”

Who are the “Christians” referred to by this man? Are they people who embrace Southern Baptist doctrines? Are they biblical literalists the world over? Are they believers who understand that the worldviews presented in scripture, by the various writers giving expression to their faith over a span of hundreds of years, are different from how we understand the world today? Are they people without sin, as he seems to imply?

I am mystified by Mohler’s opinions on this subject. He says that homosexuality may actually be an orientation rather than a life-style choice; that God’s Creation “bears the marks of sin;” and, that “Christians (need) to show compassion to sinners.”

He advocates banning same-sex marriage, presumably because he somehow sees it as a “threat” to heterosexual marriage (I still can’t figure out THAT one). His church, the Southern Baptist Convention, adopted a resolution calling on Congress to do away with pending Hate Crimes legislation because it would add a “layer of protection to homosexuals.”

It’s like he’s saying, “Even though this is how these people were created, and they had no choice in the matter, there is something inherently wrong and unworthy about them. They don’t deserve to have the same rights and freedoms as folks like me who obviously are superior to them.”

This suggests that homosexuals simply are born with some unique variation, like a different skin color, for instance, and because of that are deemed as unacceptable by those holding political and economic power. This position is justified by quoting a few verses of scripture.

Haven’t we been through this already?

A Clean Slate?
Even though I have a break from preaching next Sunday, I know the lessons from the Revised Common Lectionary touch on the theme of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a basic aspect of the Christian faith. One could make the case that forgiveness is THE basic aspect of the Christian faith.

Yet, it’s very difficult to deal with.

On the one hand, many of us have a real struggle believing we can be forgiven the things we do that offend or hurt someone, or that run counter to God’s will. Counselors spend a lot of time working with people who won’t forgive themselves and who can’t conceive of anyone else forgiving them, either. It all seems rather selfish, really, as if the things we do are so monumentally important that they matter to the point no one can get over them. “How can you ever forgive me??”

Jesus encouraged forgiveness and granted forgiveness. His death on the cross, we say, somehow assured God’s forgiveness of human sin. He also said, “Follow me,” and part of following Jesus entails forgiving others.

Several times in my career I have succeeded individuals who were fired from their positions. In one case, a couple of years after the fact, the fired individual sent a letter to the church asking their forgiveness for certain behaviors during his tenure as pastor. When I showed the letter to the woman who was chair of the Board, the color drained from her face. At the next meeting, as she tried to read the letter to the rest of the board members, she couldn’t get through it. She began to cry. I finished reading the letter to the group.

One of the members gathered his papers and brief case and stormed out of the meeting. I followed him into the church narthex. He kept saying, “No. No. No. I will never forgive him! No!” After we talked for a while he finally calmed down and I got him back into the meeting room.

There was a lot of suspicion of the person’s motives in asking for forgiveness. The outcome, as I recall it, was the writing of a vaguely-worded letter, basically acknowledging the man’s request, but tap-dancing around the matter of forgiveness. It was very disappointing.

The Power of Forgiveness is a film by Martin Doblmeier of Journey Films. Martin has traveled the country screening his film and holding discussions with diverse groups of folks. The film likely will be broadcast in some form on PBS in a few months.

One vignette in the film is especially haunting. Three women who lost sons (policemen and firefighters) in the 9/11 attacks honestly describe their struggles around the issue of forgiveness; not only of those who attacked the World Trade Center, but also the city of New York. Debris from Ground Zero containing unaccounted-for remains of victims, including the sons of these women, was trucked out and placed in a landfill. “They just put our sons out there with the garbage,” one of the women tearfully complains.

All of that was awful enough, but the real kicker comes when another mother finally admits that she and her firefighter son were not on speaking terms at the time of the attack. There was some disagreement over the son’s wedding plans. The son died without ever reconciling with his mother. In watching the film, it was clear that the hardest part of it all for her was the unresolved poor state of their relationship.

The power of forgiveness was unused.

What's Going On?
Probably the most inane thing a church member ever said in my presence was this: "God invented war so that humans could settle our disputes." This statement must win some award for utter blind denial of human sinfulness.

I admit I do not understand everything about God (and be very suspicious of anyone who claims to fully know the mind of God), but based on my perceptions from scripture, God would not "invent" something that features rape, pestilence, destruction, torture, maiming, and death. That sounds more like something we humans would do.

It all began with that first shove. Then someone determined they could throw a rock at another person and not be in arm's reach for a return blow. Then came spears. "Hey, a catapult would launch an object even further than we can throw it!" "There must be some way we can use fire to hurt those people we hate so much."

Then, some genius figured out a formula for explosives and gunpowder. "Let's experiment with the energy compressed in atoms." You get the picture.

God wasn't smiling during any of this, or giving pointers on how to make it all more effective.

If it weren't enough that we could kill each other and destroy homes, infrastructures, and businesses, and disrupt societies so effectively, now we're realizing that the effects of war linger.

Reuters news service reported this: "Male U.S. veterans are twice as likely to die by suicide than people with no military service, and are more likely to kill themselves with a gun than others who commit suicide, researchers said on Monday...(B)ecause of improvements in medicine since earlier wars, some troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have survived wounds that may have been fatal in previous conflicts, but have serious physical and mental disabilities that may put them at higher suicide risk."

The sin of humanity is so far gone, we will not stop the madness of war. Our sin is so far gone, we sometimes no longer recognize that we even are at fault.

But that collides with the truth about life that God infuses throughout Creation, even in our own souls.

The effects of that collision are devastating.

Leaving On A Jet Plane
There was a woman in one of my congregations that lived almost to her 100th birthday. She once told me that in 1905, when she was a little girl, her family traveled by covered wagon from, I believe, Missouri to the Pacific Northwest. It was amazing to me to listen to someone speak first-hand about such an experience, one that seemed to me relegated only to novels, movies, and history books.

My day yesterday would have been incomprehensible to those people. I traveled from Florida to California in four and a half hours. Looking down from the airplane at some of the rough terrain, I can't even begin to imagine the courage and strength it took for explorers and pioneers to travel through those places so long ago.

Life has evolved in many phenomenal ways. Changes have been astounding and seemingly unpredictable in their effects on us.

Yet, despite our advances, we still struggle with basic spiritual weaknesses and needs. We still are not capable of coping entirely on our own.

The witness of scripture is that God is the same, "yesterday, today, and tomorrow."

Growing In Grace
For nine or ten years, beginning in 1987, we were members of First Christian Church in Falls Church, Virginia. We've been gone now from the church as long as we were there.

The current DisciplesWorld magazine features an article about this year's Youth Sunday service at the church. The photo shows some of the kids who were born during our time there, now in high school.

The focus of the service was the crisis in Sudan, an attempt to raise the issues of the suffering of the people, and an encouragement for church folks to make a response, through prayer, advocacy, and generosity.

Our faith is one we share, not only with those outside the church, but with those who are born into it, as well. We nurture in them the importance of a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. We teach them about grace, compassion, and forgiveness, and how we are blessed abundantly by God in these ways and others. We challenge them to share the love of Christ with others.

The youth of First Christian Church in Falls Church are demonstrating that these lessons are being taught and learned there. They are growing into the faith in a meaningful way.

And they already are encouraging faithfulness and love in the lives of others.

Ho-sanna, Ha-sanna, Sanna, Sanna, Ho
Recently, I heard that actor Ted Neeley was appearing on stage yet again in his role as Jesus in the rock-opera production Jesus Christ Superstar. I think it was around 1975 or so when I first saw the movie version, in which Neeley starred. The movie was based on a live version that was around for a while beforehand.

I do not know what other acting credits Ted Neeley has in his career, although I have a vague memory of seeing him in a western movie at some point. A quick glance at his official web site leads me to believe touring the nation as Jesus is his full-time vocation, and has been for a long time. I find it somewhat amusing that the same actor has played the role so long – longer, actually, than Jesus himself walked the earth. I guess we now know what Jesus would have been like as he had his 60th birthday surrounded!

There is a lot of memorable, enjoyable music in Superstar, and it’s fun to watch the movie every now and again. I recall one person in a preaching class at seminary who said he found inspiration for sermons by listening to the songs. Hopefully, by now he has moved beyond that.

Sometimes when a movie such as Superstar hits the theaters there is uproar. The Last Temptation of Christ was another one that brought controversy, as did Mel Gibson’s movie a few years ago, The Passion of the Christ, I think it was called. There have been others, as well.

Personally, it never bothers me, because I don’t take them that seriously. I understand the movies merely as someone’s interpretation of the story, skewed or fanciful, though it may be. Hopefully, they spark conversation and thinking, and perhaps even incite someone to blow the dust off their Bible and take a look inside.

Certainly, controversial religious movies are no more threatening to God than the old-time bathrobe movies with all of their dramatic background music, simplistic interpretations, and meaningful glances between characters.

The made-for-TV production, Jesus of Nazareth, while a wonderful and ambitious attempt to tell the story of Jesus, featured many of the characters speaking with a British accent.

I remember one scene where, as he watched it, my son Gabe said, “They sound like the Beatles.”