Going Off Script

Over this past week, I’ve been paying attention to the scripts that people follow. And I keep hearing the same script repeatedly. In fact, if you follow the history of civilization, it’s pretty much the same script, over and over. It’s about choosing sides. My side is better than your side and I’m going to prove my superiority by exerting power over you.

Within just one week, I saw it at the Superbowl, in the impeachment proceedings, during the Iowa caucuses, and the State of the Union Address. There’s us and there’s them. It’s our job, not only to protect us from them, but to push them down as far as we can on our way to the top.

It’s difficult, when everyone around us is following that script, not to get drawn into it. As I witnessed the president’s State of the Union Address, I felt myself clearly in an us against them state of mind. And it wasn’t a good place for me. I was all caught up in it, consumed with thoughts I’m not proud of. So, I decided to try something new.

I made up my mind that I was going to detach from all that I was seeing and observe it as if I were seated in an audience, a few hundred years from now, watching it all happen as a stage performance. Nothing that’s happening on that stage has anything to do with me. I’m just a part of the audience.

The characters and the plot are reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, like MacBeth or Julius Caesar. The plot is a classic tale of the battle for power, and it’s us against them.

This week we watched a pivotal, dramatic scene. A man who holds the most powerful position in the world enters a great hall to give a speech. It’s the hall where his enemies have been doing everything they can to remove him from power. And here he is, in this same place, with those who seek to bring him down, delivering a speech to assert his authority before the very people who are challenging it. Some are cheering and some jeering. This includes his adversary who has led the charge against him. She sits calmly, center stage, listening to his speech, as she is duty-bound to do. And then, when the speech is over, she rises to her feet and rips his words in half.  End of scene. Curtain. You have to admit that it makes for gripping theater. The kind of material that Shakespeare would have turned into one of his greatest plays.

If you can detach yourself from the scene and watch it as pure drama, you’ll notice that the plot is classic. Classic because it’s the same script people have been following from the beginning of recorded history – aligning themselves with their own people and doing everything they can to defeat their adversaries. It’s been the same us-against-them story in different forms, over and over again.

When you’re all wrapped up in the details as they unfold, it may be hard to see it. But when you’re observing from the audience, it’s obvious. Everyone is following their script and you know where it’s headed. Someone's gonna win and someone’s gonna lose. 

Now, imagine you’re watching a play like this unfold and suddenly, out of nowhere, a new character enters. And this character starts going completely off-script. He’s refusing to hate those who should be his enemies. He never asserts power over those he could easily defeat. When people come at him in anger, he refuses to respond in anger. When he’s hated, he refuses to hate back. When people harm him, he doesn’t retaliate, but he shows mercy. He expresses love and empathy for everyone on the stage.

It’s so disruptive that the other actors in the play have to pull him aside. "Listen, Mister, you’re not following the script. You’re messing everything up. If you can’t cooperate, we’re going to have to ask you to leave."

Well, he continues off-script-- loving his enemies, empowering the weak, welcoming outcasts-- until the actors can’t stand it anymore, and they physically eject him from the stage.

Now that he’s gone, they can return to the script. They can go back to demonizing one another, and attacking one another, defending their turf and obliterating their enemies.

Jesus went off script. And it did, indeed, get him killed.

His followers recognized the truth he spoke and lived. And they followed in the way he taught them, by going off script, just as he did.

If you’re looking for a way to live off script like Jesus did, read his Sermon on the Mount in chapters 5 through 7 of Matthew. He teaches about radical stuff, like praying for our enemies. Turning the other cheek. Refusing to retaliate against those who would do us harm, but returning love for hatred instead. 

There’s no future in following the script the world teaches us. If we continue to follow it, it will destroy us.

When’s the last time you’ve gone off script? How can you surprise people around you with your decency, your honesty, your love, your insistence on befriending those the world insists are your enemies? Together, as followers of Jesus, how can we disrupt the world around us by going off script? 

Should we stop inviting people to join our Jesus Club?

I'm a big Richard Rohr fan. This meme is one I've seen before, but this morning I posted it on Facebook because I need to take it to heart. I forget this truth over and over again and I need the reminder. 

As you may know, I'm in the first year of a new call. That means I'm navigating a sea of expectations--some my congregation is expecting of me, and some I'm expecting of myself.

Since coming to Ascension, a number of people are returning who have been away for a while. This brings me great joy, but it leads to stories about why they disappeared in the first place, and those stories are often about how the congregation or the previous pastors didn't meet their expectations. With a new pastor comes a fresh start, but I'm aware of the fact that the same expectations may still be in place, and I wonder how long it will be before I don't meet them.

One of the expectation traps I fall into is the one that says, "We need to grow." It's shorthand for, "We need to grow numerically so that we're around for a long, long time." It's what every congregation and every pastor wants. And it's killing us.

Since I've come to Ascension, we've only received a handful of new members, and lately I've been obsessing over it. We aren't keeping pace with the deaths and the people who have moved away, so we're loosing ground. Ascension is the first congregation I've served where this has happened and it has me rattled.

We're doing all we can to stop the bleeding. We're following all the expert advice on how to get people in the door and hang onto them once they arrive. I keep telling myself it's early, it will turn around, but then I succumb to the fear that is lurking in the recesses of every mainline pastor's mind these days--the fear that the congregation they're serving is going to be one of the many to bite the dust over the next few decades. It's happening all around us, and I'm afraid it's making a lot of us a little crazy.

That's why I'm always thankful when someone like Richard Rohr comes along to give me a whack upside the head, reminding me that the whole point of being a Christian is not serving an institution, it's following Jesus and allowing him to transform our lives.

Why is it so easy for me to forget that? I get sucked into a culture of scarcity and fear and devote myself to maintaining the institution; I've become a slave to expectations that have nothing to do with Jesus. Jesus never tells us to build enormous edifices, design great websites, offer services of worship that are major productions, have dynamic youth programs, or sermons that make our listeners want to stand up and cheer. He says, "Follow me."

That's not to say that we should be satisfied with mediocre ministry. We offer our very best to a God who has given us all we have. But we need to be clear about our purpose, and our purpose is not proving we're a church worthy of a future. Our purpose is following Jesus.

Maybe we need to stop inviting people to come to church. Maybe we need to stop taking attendance on Sunday mornings. Maybe we need to stop working so hard to get people to join our Jesus Club. Can you imagine what it would be like if we expended that same energy inviting people to follow Jesus and supporting one another as we walk the Jesus Way in the world, as individuals and as a community? I wonder if we can do that as long as the Church as an institution exists.

Here's the irony. If the Church continues to engage in this struggle for the survival of the fittest, we're as good as dead. But if we can be about inviting people to follow Jesus and supporting them on the Jesus Way in the world, I suspect we will grow and thrive. (Maybe it's a variation on "Whoever wants to save their life must lose it.")

Yes, every once in a while I need to be reminded of that, and I need to adjust my expectations accordingly. I'm not a pastor called to save an institution. I'm a pastor called to invite, encourage and support others who are, along with me, followers of Jesus. I trust as long as I'm doing what I'm called to do, God will do the rest.