For Christians Who Are Struggling

Why am I seeing so many Christians who are struggling with marriage equality NOW? They saw the Supreme Court decision from last Friday coming, didn’t they? If not in 2015, it was coming eventually. Surely this has been an inner unresolved issue for a long time for those who are now outwardly grumbling. And yet, until now, they chose to ignore it like a zit they’ve been told they shouldn’t mess with and in time it will go away on its own.

Maybe the issue of same gender marriage has been ignored because some Christians didn’t take it seriously, but I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s because it scares the bejeebers out of Christians who look to the Bible as a rule book. The fear is that once you start chipping away at those rules, what’s left? 

From their perspective, I suspect they can’t fathom how someone like me, someone who calls herself a Christian, can say the things I do when they so blatantly contradict what the Bible says. I’m not always sure what to do about this because it seems like we’re speaking a different language when it comes to the Bible. They quote Bible verses to convince me of the error in my thinking, and they might as well be speaking Urdu. It’s absolutely meaningless to me. I just don’t read the Bible like that.

What separates us is the way we allow the Bible to inform our lives. For many Christians, quoting the Bible is an effective way to make a point. This is the way it is, they’ll tell me, because it says so right here in the Bible. It’s the bumper sticker approach to Scripture: “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.”

Sometimes I wish it were that simple. Instead, for me, it’s more like: “One version of the Bible that is commonly accepted today says it. While trying to find meaning in my life, the Biblical writers are among the sacred voices that inform me. I’m open to some of the Bible’s truths for me as my journey continues to unfold.” It’s not as catchy as, “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” And it sure won’t fit onto a bumper sticker.

I could tell you some of the reasons why I’m not a Biblical literalist, but then, I’m not sure there is such a thing as a Biblical literalist. Even those who might be labeled as such are selective about which parts of the Bible they take literally.

What most of us probably would call a Biblical literalist is someone who looks to the Bible for definitive answers.

You don’t have to turn very many pages in your Bible to see that it was never intended to be read that way. It’s evident from the get-go, where we have two versions of creation in the opening chapters of Genesis. If there were one, we would be able to point to it and say, “There, that’s how it happened.” Instead, we have two entirely different stories describing how it happened.

If the Bible were written to give us definitive answers, we also would have one story about Jesus. Instead, we have four. When Matthew, Mark, Luke and John can’t agree about the way the story unfolded, how can we say that the Bible was ever intended to give us definitive answers? Which answers would those be?

I don’t think the Bible is intended to be a rule book. Jesus certainly didn’t use the Scriptures as a rule book. He often turned the law inside out and challenged what once had been accepted as truth. Much the same way, in the early Church, laws that once seemed ironclad were suddenly changed or discarded altogether. (Take the need for male converts to be circumcised, for instance.)

One of the things we can learn from the witness of the Scriptures is that part of what it means to be God’s people is to be open to new ways of understanding how God is working in the world. Maybe God changes, or maybe it’s just our understanding of God that changes, but clearly God is a God of transformation.

When the laws of Scripture are changed within Scripture, how can we think that those laws would suddenly become etched in stone once someone decided the Bible had been completed? Isn’t the Spirit still alive and active in the world today?

For me, the Bible is not a set of instructions that tells me how to live. It’s not prescriptive, but descriptive. It’s a collection of writings from people who have been in relationship with God. They’ve written about their experiences and the meaning they’ve gleaned from those experiences—as people of faith. Because I’m also a person of faith who searches for meaning in my own experiences, I treasure their witness. They enrich me, encourage me and often challenge me. I also feel free to disagree with them.

I think that’s how we were meant to read the Scriptures.

When I sit down with the adult Sunday school class at Holy Trinity, we get into deep discussions about what it means to live out our faith in the world today. We share with one another about how it’s working for us, what meaning we're finding along the way, how we struggle. We don’t always agree, but the Spirit speaks to us in those open discussions. I’m thankful to be a part of a community of faith where that can happen.

In the same way, the authors of the Scriptures are also a part of my faith community, and they speak to me. I may not always agree with what they have to say, but I trust that the Spirit is at work as they inform me along the way. Their witness has stood the test of time. They’ve spoken to millions of Christians throughout the centuries, and that gives them a level of credibility that makes them hard to dismiss. They’re a treasure to me. I can’t imagine how I would negotiate the life of faith without them. I suspect I’d be lost. And yet, the Biblical witnesses don’t tell me how to live.

Does that make me a heretic? I don’t think so. It just means that when I read the Bible I’m not expecting answers. I’m expecting a conversation.

When I began seminary I read the Bible for answers. I didn’t know a lot about it, so I was hungry for those answers. Then I read passages that told me I shouldn’t be doing what I was doing—preparing for ordained ministry. The problem was that I knew beyond a doubt that the Spirit had called me to do this. So, I had to wrestle with how to interpret scripture. My interpretation had been too narrow. It had to expand so that it was big enough to contain what I knew to be true from my experience.

That’s the way we change and grow. When what we have held to be true is challenged and we’re forced to wrestle with a new truth, in one way or another we’re transformed. May this be such a time for Christians who struggle with the SCOTUS decision on June 26.

Do I hear bells ringing?

Do I hear bells ringing? Are they freedom bells or wedding bells? The answer is, “Yes!” At long last men who love men and women who love women will have the freedom to marry in this country, no matter where they live.

Last October, when we celebrated marriage equality in North Carolina, my tears of joy were tempered with tears for those who were still waiting in other parts of the county. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” Dr. King once said. Today I celebrate an end to an injustice that has muted the bell of liberty and justice for all in this great nation of ours.

Even at that, with this victory won at last, there is so much that continues to muffle the clear sound of freedom so many of us long to hear. Still reeling from the events in Charleston a week ago, and now learning that a predominantly black church right around the corner from me has been deliberately set on fire, the lingering injustice done to people of color continues to trouble my soul. I see it in the criminal justice system, voter suppression, our education system… all outward signs of the inward racism we have so much difficulty owning up to as white Americans.

For today, I’ll celebrate this glorious victory. Woohoo! 

But there is much work to be done before freedom rings clearly in our land.

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Why do we worship?

Why do you worship? Some people tell me that they don’t worship because it does nothing for them. Other people will say that, if they haven’t been to worship, their whole week seems out of whack. For those of us who worship somewhat regularly, it’s a question worth considering. Why do you worship?

I was thinking about this as I was working on our summer liturgy this morning and decided that it might be good to begin worship by paying attention to why we’re gathered together in a time and place set apart, with people we might never choose to associate with otherwise, for some strange activities that are a radical departure from the way we spend the other 167 hours of the week. So, I wrote a Call to Worship to begin our time together on Sunday.

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CALL TO WORSHIP

We gather as people created in the image of God, reborn of the Spirit, called to follow the Jesus Way in the world:

to love God with our whole being;

to love our neighbors as ourselves;

to treat others as we would have them treat us;

to strive for justice and peace;

to have respect and compassion for every person

and for the whole of creation;

to forgive those who do us harm;

to love one another as Christ has loved us.

That’s the way we long to live. But in reality, we often fail.

We ask for your forgiveness and your help.

We gather because your ways are not the world’s ways, and the world has such an overwhelming influence on us. We know there is more to life than judgment and fear, violence and greed.

Open us to your Word. Teach us. Transform us.

We gather to be reminded of who you are and who we are.

You are God, and we are not.

All that we have and all that we are is a gift from you.

We are yours.

We gather to thank and praise you, to hear the good news proclaimed, to break bread and pray together. We reach out to you and one another for strength beyond our own.

And so we enter into this time of worship.

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From my perspective, this is why we worship. But how would you answer the question for yourself? I invite you to really think it through. You might write your answer down and read it as a reminder before you gather for worship within your own community of faith, or if you resonate with what I’ve written, help yourself.

Worship is best entered into mindfully. Then it becomes more than just one more thing in a long list of stuff we do during the course of a week. It is at the center, where it belongs. 

In a comma coma

If you’ve spent any time with me over the past year, you are aware of why I’ve been so distracted these days. If you don’t know me very well, you might be surprised to know that I’ve been working on a book that is teetering on the brink of being finished. I just can’t bring myself to let it go and am wondering what will happen when I do. Will it take wing in the breeze and fly, or will it crash in the mud with a thud?

I had enough people encouraging me to write a book in recent years that I was seriously considering it when a friend of mine, who actually coaches people in the writing process, offered to give me some help. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. If I was ever going to do this, now was the time.

So, I’ve written a spiritual memoir called Threads: pulling meaning from the tangled mess. It’s about my life and the meaning I’ve been able to draw from it. I’m hoping that it will help other people in their own process of meaning-making along the way.

Let me tell you that I’ve gained new-found respect for authors. Especially authors who have other full-time jobs. Every spare moment of my life has been devoted to this book. I’m ready to move on to other things. Like enjoying the sunshine, reconnecting with friends, and getting rid of the dust bunnies under my bed, which have grown into dust elephants over the past year. But I’m having trouble letting go.

I thought I was finished a few months ago. Then, as I read the proof, I became painfully aware of how I was using conjunctions. I went through the entire book and made adjustments. There. Now I was done.

When I read the next proof, I got hung up on the word that. When do you use it and when don’t you? Argh. I went through the entire book again, struggling over each time I used the word and whether or not it was better to leave it in or take it out. And that was that. Definitely done.

The last proof came back, and I saw inconsistencies in the way I was using commas. All the rules were becoming confused and I realized I couldn’t let my work be seen by others until I got my commas straight. So, I went through every page, comma by comma, and did what I could until I was in a comma coma.

I’m waiting to get the proof back again before I sign off on it. And I’m almost afraid to look. There has to be an end to this!

Several proofs back, I asked my coaching friend, Peg Robarchek, "How will I know when it’s finished?" Here’s what she told me: “My personal criteria for whether a book was finished was whether I had worked on it so long and hard that I was sick of it and certain it should never have been written.”

Oh, yes, Peg. I'm definitely there! Won’t be long before I’m shoving this baby off the cliff and we’ll see where it goes.

Seeds and Bombshells

Many of you know that back in April I took part in a Moral Monday protest in Raleigh that resulted in me being arrested along with 9 other clergy types. Last Monday, bright and early, I drove up to the Wake County Courthouse along with Robin Tanner, the minister at Piedmont UU, who was arrested the same time I was. It turned out that this was just the initial appearance and this case will be going on, probably well into 2016.

I didn’t know that Dr. William Barber would be with us that morning. Dr. Barber is president of the NC NAACP and the founder of the Moral Monday movement. He is a national figure. It takes a lot to impress me these days, and this man is beyond impressive. He truly has become one of my heroes.

When I was there for the two year anniversary of the Moral Monday movement in April and we marched to the statehouse, Dr. Barber grabbed my hand and we walked together at the beginning of the procession. I was so overwhelmed that it was all I could do to keep from crying. Up until then, I had only seen Dr. Barber from a distance as he addressed thousands of people with such power and wisdom that he seemed almost superhuman to me.

So, last Monday we were together again, but in a much more intimate setting. We spent a lot of time waiting around, so I had the opportunity to stand and chat with him and I could see that he was just a person like all the rest of us. Well, maybe not like all the rest of us, but he’s a person. He’s kind, and gentle in a way I hadn’t realized. A very sweet man. And pretty funny, too.

I didn’t know that this court case was a big deal until I saw all the TV cameras. After the court proceedings, we gathered as a group with Dr. Barber for a press conference. And once again he grabbed my hand and pulled me close. “I want you standing right here beside me,” he said. And I’m thinking, what’s the deal with this guy, why does he always want me standing beside him and why is he always holding my hand? But then, as I looked up and down the group I understood why. I was the only little, old white woman with silver hair. Dr. Barber is a very large, imposing black man who towers over me, so the visual contrast between the two of us is striking. Both of us standing there, side-by-side, hand-in-hand, shows people the diversity of the Moral Monday movement. Did I feel like I was being used? Nope. I was being useful. And honored to do it.

Well, after things broke up, Robin and I accompanied Dr. Barber out of the building and waited with him for his ride. And here’s where things got really interesting for me. I imagined that it must have felt a little bit like it did for the disciples of Jesus who followed him around. This man is a celebrity. Everyone who saw him wanted to talk to him. They wanted to have their picture taken with him. He was always gracious and took the opportunity to speak personally with people. He wanted to know their name, where they were from, how he could help them. Really, the way he handled people was amazing to me.

In between all of this, he conversed with Robin and me. I hung on every word he said and wished I had a recording device because I wanted to remember it all. Actually, what I’d love to do is take about two months and follow the man around so I could record everything he does and says.

As Dr. Barber, Robin and I were standing outside the courthouse, a couple of guys carrying Bibles approached us and they started telling us about their ministry with drug addicts. Dr. Barber was interested in what they were doing and engaged them in conversation. But then they started on what’s wrong with this country and they were lamenting the fact that this isn’t a Christian nation anymore and we all need to follow Christ and the way to do that is by putting prayer back in public schools. Now, when I hear people talking like this, I get my hackles up. I want to say something like, “Have you ever heard of the Bill of Rights?” and I let them know immediately where I stand. So, I was paying close attention because I wanted to hear how Dr. Barber handled it.

He listened, and he affirmed the importance of prayer, and then he turned it all around by saying something like just saying the name of Jesus and praying isn’t enough. What are we going to do about the cuts in teacher salaries? What are we going to do about taking money from public education and giving it to private schools? We fail to be Christian when we fail to invest in our children’s future. Since I didn’t have a recorder going, I can’t remember his exact words, but that’s the gist of it, as I recall. He didn’t argue with them about school prayer, he met them there and moved the conversation forward.

Afterwards, I turned to Dr. Barber and I said, “How did you do that?”

He explained to me that he always tries to meet a person where they are. For these guys, that’s the only way of thinking they knew, so that’s where he starts. He starts with what they know and he goes from there. 

He did it in such a loving way that I wasn’t sure they really heard what he was saying to them. He was disagreeing with them, but he said it in such a way that I suspect they thought he might have been agreeing with them. So I asked, “Do you think they got what you were saying?”

And here’s basically what he said to me. “That’s not my job. My job is to say it. And, whether they realized what I said or not, the Holy Spirit isn’t going to let them forget. The Holy Spirit will take it from here. We’re in this for the long term.”

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

That’s the kingdom of God. It’s like scattering seed on the ground. Once you scatter the seed, there is nothing you can do to force it to grow. You wait. It’s a long process. No one really understands how it works, but the seed breaks open and becomes a stalk. Then there is the head, and then the grain becomes ripe. The sower scatters the seed and waits for God to do the rest. 

Dr. Barber was teaching me about what it means to plant seeds.

Planting seeds is not my forte. I’m more about dropping bombshells. Some of you know how true that is. I’ve got some buttons and if you push one of my buttons, look out. I just did it at a meeting last week. Lord, have mercy.

I want to be gentle, I want to plant seeds, I want to be patient and give the Spirit time to work. I really do. But I don’t do so well at planting seeds. Instead, I drop bombshells. Now, the Spirit can use those, too, and sometimes my bombshells may turn into seeds. But more often, they’re just bombshells that explode upon impact. They can do some damage, but they aren’t of much use over the long-haul.

When I think of the people who have changed my life and the people who have changed the world—the ones who have had a lasting impact—it’s not the ones who have dropped bombshells that come to mind. It’s the ones who have planted seeds.

Who are some of the ones who have gone before us planting seeds that have produced the harvest we’re reaping now? And what seeds are we planting today for those who will come after us?

The kingdom of God is about dropping bombshells? Something Jesus never said—ever!

Here’s what Jesus did say: The kingdom of God is about planting seeds.