Counting Sheep

Most churches are busy counting sheep these days. It’s time for denominations to collect statistical data for their congregations from the previous year.  How many new members do you have? How many baptisms did you do? How many people died? And the tell-tale number that most pastors pay the closest attention to, how many people did you average in weekly worship? It’s all about the numbers.

I always bristle at this. I know that followers of Jesus aren’t called to be successful in the eyes of the world, we’re called to be faithful in the eyes of God. And I know that Jesus wasn’t hung up on numbers. In fact, he seemed to do everything he could to thin the crowds out with the things he taught and the way he lived.

I also know that what really matters in ministry can’t be measured numerically. How are the people in my faith community striving to follow the Jesus Way in their lives? How are we embodying Jesus by making a difference in the world around us? How are lives being transformed in and through our faith community? Those are the questions I wish my denomination was asking at the end of the year, not, how many people are coming to our Sunday school?

The questions that really matter seem antithetical to counting sheep. It would stand to reason that when a faith community is striving to follow the Jesus Way, they would not be popular, they would go against the status quo, and their numbers would be small.

But, of course, congregations and denominations care about numbers because they are institutions. And institutions are wired for self-preservation. As a pastor, I do everything I can to resist getting caught in the institutional trap.

Nonetheless, I have my own problem with numbers. It’s a problem that’s hard for me to admit. But, if I’m completely honest, I have to confess that counting sheep tends to hit me where it hurts the most-- right in the ego.  

Before I came to Holy Trinity, had you asked me if I cared about the size of the church I served, I would have insisted that numbers had no effect on me. A pastor serving a large, thriving church is no more valued than one serving a small, struggling one. But then, when I made the decision to actually leave one of those thriving churches and go to a struggling one, I learned something painful about myself. Apparently, my ego did care about the numbers. I had a PhD. I had served on the bishop’s staff. I had been a senior pastor of a large congregation. I had 25 years of experience. I should be moving up the ladder, not stepping backwards. I wasn’t proud of my pride. But there it was, staring me in the face.

When I came to Holy Trinity, our worship attendance was in the 40s, on a good Sunday. It didn’t take long for those numbers to increase. New people started attending and joining, and we stopped worrying about surviving. The congregation breathed a sigh of relief. It was enough for them. But it wasn’t enough for me. I wasn’t going for a mega-church, but I had it in my head that in order to be viable, in order to do the kind of ministry that a church needs to do, we needed to have at least 100 people at worship on a Sunday. I was sure that it would happen within a couple of years. I knew I was a good preacher, and I could bring them in. But it didn’t happen as I expected. We crept up into the 70s and got stuck. At about the eight year mark, we even started to slip backwards.

I coped with this by convincing myself that I wasn’t going to get hung up on numbers. I focused on the way we had expanded our mission, how we were offering people the opportunity to grow deeper in their faith, how lives were being changed. But I have to admit that there was a part of me, a part I was trying hard to deny, that was feeling beaten down. I would look at pastors who served larger churches, churches that were adding staff, churches that were building additional space, and I wondered what they had that I didn’t have. In my head, I knew it wasn’t personal, but in my gut I was feeling the punches. Maybe I wasn’t the pastor I thought I was. Hmmm. Or, here’s an idea. Maybe this didn’t have as much to do with me as I thought it did. Maybe it wasn’t my church after all. Maybe it was God’s church.

I decided to go with the latter explanation. Holy Trinity is God’s church, not mine. I will do my best, but ultimately, I’m not responsible for the outcome.

The thing is, I’m not sure if I really believe that, or if it’s an idea I’ve latched onto because it helps me protect myself from feeling like a failure. It’s always so hard for me to sort these things out. Have I convinced myself of this because living with self-deception is always so much easier than being honest about my own shortcomings?

So I wonder how much of my faith in God’s sovereignty over Holy Trinity is, in fact, a way of protecting my ego. I don’t know. What I do know is that, for whatever reason, it helps me to recognize that this isn’t my church, but God’s church. If I hadn’t struggled so much with the failure of my ministry at Holy Trinity to meet my expectations, I would still be living with the illusion that I can be the church’s savior. And that was an illusion that had to go.

This year, our average worship attendance went way up. And maybe I should be feeling really good about myself, as a result. But I know better. I realize that the new people in the pews had absolutely nothing to do with me. I didn’t do anything in 2013 that I hadn’t been doing in 2012. By what might be considered an “odd set of circumstances”, a large number of new people found their way to Holy Trinity last summer. Of course, I would call that odd set of circumstances the Holy Spirit.

This year Holy Trinity will be reporting to the ELCA that we went from an average worship attendance of 70 to 90 in one year. And it will be just another number to them. To me it means so much more. That number humbles me as a pastor. It reminds me that it’s not about me.  And it fills me with renewed faith in the God who is at work in the world. Sometimes even in churches.

Have the wise men changed, or is it me?

I’m thinking about how I’ve grown in my understanding through the years because of the lesson for Epiphany (January 6), the story of the wise men visiting Jesus. The first sermon I ever preached was all about how the Jesus way is the only way to live in this world. It’s the sort of thing that you hear from a lot of Christians. Like I said, it’s what you would have heard from me when I was younger.

But I can’t say that now. Not since coming to Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Charlotte and taking seriously what it means to live like Jesus in the world, loving not judging. Being a part of this community has helped me see that God never excludes. God always includes. God’s grace is impartial and offered to everyone. And that includes people who may understand God differently than we do. Even if they completely reject the idea of God, it doesn’t change the fact that they are included in God’s embrace.

So, when I consider the significance of wise men from the East coming to pay homage to Jesus, I realize that they mean something completely different to me now than they did even 10 years ago. Back then, I saw them as representatives of other nations that we need to reach with the gospel message. The wise men were a call for us to go out and bring all people to Christ.

But now, when I read this story, what jumps out at me is the fact that these were absolute foreigners in every way. Completely outside the circle of Jesus’ world. The word often used for the wise men is magi is related to the word magician. These people were regarded as pagans. They were into astrology, perhaps Zoroastrian court advisors. They must have been wealthy, based upon the gifts they brought. I picture them dressed in elaborate brocade robes and jeweled turbans -- looking terribly out of place in the little town of Bethlehem. They didn’t come to be converted. They came to pay their respects to the new king and then they went home again.

We get two stories of Jesus’ birth in the gospels: one from Luke and this one from Matthew. In Luke’s story, the first people who came to visit the new-born baby were shepherds. They learned of Jesus birth through a direct revelation, angels appearing in the midnight sky. But Matthew’s visit of the wise men is a little more difficult to understand. They learned of Jesus’ birth by observing a star. The star didn’t audibly speak to them. They had to interpret this natural sign to know what it meant and where it would lead. They trusted the movements of the stars to speak to them. I don’t know many Christians who would be comfortable including people like the magi in their circle of the elect. I wonder if we would at Holy Trinity. 

Here’s a way to test that. The communion table is central to us. It’s a strong symbol of who we are as God’s people. How comfortable would we be with some astrologers from Iran who weren’t Christian showing up on a Sunday morning and taking communion with us?

The presence of the magi in Bethlehem challenges our narrow thinking about who’s in and who’s out. Often, when we say all are included, we mean, all are included, as long as they meet our standards. And the whole point of Christianity is to convert those who aren’t like us to become like us so that they’ll be included, too.

It’s all about “winning people for Christ.” I used to talk like that. Now, it makes me cringe. It comes from a theology that says God only saves those who believe the right things, which, of course, means, believing the way we believe. And, out of the goodness of our hearts, we set out to tell others about Jesus so they can be included within the circle of the elect just like we are. This way of thinking reduces God to our size.

It’s closely related to the whole idea of Christian triumphalism, which also makes me cringe.
                Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
                with the cross of Jesus going on before.
                Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
                forward into battle see his banners go!

The idea is that it’s our job to make everyone into Christians. That Christians have a responsibility to dominate the world. Because we’re right, and they’re wrong. We’re God’s people, they’re not. We’re saved, they’re going to hell. And so, we’re on God’s side and everyone else must come around to our way of thinking. This kind of theology is rampant in our culture, and it’s scary. It goes all the way back to Constantine who literally made people convert to Christianity if they wanted to live.

I think about this every year at Christmastime when I hear from someone who is all bent out of shape over the phrase “Happy Holidays.” Now, no one is saying they can’t say “Merry Christmas.” But the fact that some people say “Happy Holidays” is offensive to them. They see it as an attack on Christ, who, of course, needs us Christians to defend him.

Christianity, after all, is the only true religion, and anyone who thinks otherwise is our enemy. If you acknowledge that not everyone is a Christian and it would be good if we respected their differences without trying to dominate them by insisting that Christianity reign supreme – if you take an open approach like that, you are perceived as anti-Christian. Allowing people to say “Happy Holidays” without insisting upon “Merry Christmas” is an affront to Christ. It’s giving in to all those Jews and Muslims and atheists who are trying to take over our Christian nation.

I’ll tell you, every year this just makes me crazy. And I wonder, is this really the way Jesus would deal with the religious diversity of our world today? Would he be offended with the greeting “Happy Holidays” as a way to include everyone in this season of joy to the WORLD?

And then, into the Christmas story walk pagans from Persia. Ironic, huh?

When I was younger, I was overly concerned about who could and couldn’t take communion. I was like the altar-Nazi. “No communion for you.” But I’ve changed. And I’d like to believe the magi would be welcome at our communion table at Holy Trinity. Mainly because I could never imagine Jesus would turn them away.

The Jesus way is the way I have chosen to live my life. That’s no secret. And I share my faith story with others because it might also be the way they choose to live their lives. It’s a good way to live. But I don’t have to win people over. Everybody doesn’t need to be a Christian. The Jesus way isn’t the only way.

I never would have said that 30 years ago. But when I’m in a relationship with the God of love, every time I think I’ve figured out exactly who is in God’s circle of love, God comes along and challenges my narrow thinking. It’s happened again and again. The circle keeps expanding until I have come to the conclusion that God is a circle whose center is nowhere and whose circumference is everywhere.

We don’t have to all agree on the same theological points before we can be included in the circle of God’s beloved children. When we say all are welcome at our communion table, I hope we don’t mean all people who think like us. Or all who believe like us. I hope we just mean ALL.

On a cold morning three palm fruit farmers were warming themselves by the fireside. Soon two of them were engaged in a heated debate comparing their religions to decide which one was the true religion. 

Okoro, the oldest among them, sat quietly listening to the debate. Suddenly the two turned to him and asked, “Decide for us, Okoro. Which religion is the right one?” Okoro rubbed his white beards and said thoughtfully, “Well, you know there are three ways to get from here to the oil mill. You can go right over the hill. That is shorter but it is a steep climb. You can go around the hill on the right side. That is not too far, but the road is rough and full of potholes. Or you can go around the hill on the left side. That is the longest way, but it is also the easiest.”

He paused and then added, “But you know, when you get there, the mill man doesn’t ask you how you came. All he asks is, ‘How good is your fruit?’”

Angels, Shepherd, Wise Men... and a Mass Murderer?

16When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.17Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:18“A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” Matthew 2:16-18

 

This is a disturbing passage, isn’t it? After the simple beauty of the birth narrative, and the wondrous story of wise men from the east following the star to find Jesus and bring him gifts, we get this. It’s an abrupt ending to what had been a merry little Christmas. Yes, merry, right up until the point where the evil king starts killing innocent babies. 

 

Well, I could easily dismiss this story by pointing out how it probably never happened. There is no historic record of such an event ever occurring. The only place we read about it anywhere is here in Matthew’s gospel. And Matthew made it a point to insert stuff throughout his narrative to prove that Jesus was a fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures. The parallel he draws here, of course, is with Moses. Remember how all the babies were killed in that story and Moses was saved? And remember where it all took place? Yes, it happened to be the place to which Mary and Joseph fled with their son Jesus. So, Matthew just threw this in because that’s what Matthew does, and we don’t need to fret over it. 

 

But I’m afraid that might be letting us off the hook too easily. Whether or not it actually happened, it seems to be an important part of the story, the truth that Matthew wants us to see. 

 

In American culture, there is typically an important figure missing from our nativity scenes. Are you aware of that? In other cultures, you will often find a figure dressed in a robe, with his arms folded and a great big frown on his face. When I first saw this I had to ask, “Who is that mean looking guy?” “It’s Herod,” I was told. And I thought, how weird is that? I mean, does a mass murderer belong with the angels and the shepherds and the wise men? Is Herod really a part of the Christmas story?

 

When the Magi ask him about the king of the Jews, he’s miffed because, after all HE is king of the Jews. Seeing a threat, he has the power to eliminate it, and he exercises that power. Matthew never tells us that the Messiah was born meek and mild. He tells us that, from the get-go, Jesus entered this world to challenge the powerful. And at the very beginning of the story, Matthew tells us how it’s all going to end. 

 

Matthew’s inclusion of the story of Herod reminds us that Jesus was born into a world mired in violence. Now, if you’ve ever read the Old Testament, you know that it’s just about the most violent book ever written. Its pages are dripping with blood. Often, the violence is attributed to God. God is angry with people. And when God is angry, somebody’s gotta pay. 

 

If you’re one of those people who think God wrote the Bible, God paints a disturbing picture of himself. But, if you happen to be someone who believes, as I do, that the Bible was written by people who spoke from their own limited understanding at the time, their perception of God is more interesting than disturbing. Those who told the stories we have in our Old Testament were trying to make sense of the world and their relationship with God, just as we all are. And they were speaking from their own limited experience. They held a primitive worldview that is reflected in a primitive understanding of God. God rewards the good and punishes the wicked, and you’d better do everything you can to appease God’s anger because when God gets angry, somebody’s gotta pay. That’s a primitive understanding of God.

 

Jesus said, “Do you really think that’s what God is like? That God smites entire cities just because they don’t do what he wants them to do? Oy! Nothing could be further from the truth. God isn’t about violence. God is about love. And to be a part of God’s reign, you need to be about mercy, and compassion. That means that when someone strikes you on your right cheek, you don’t strike them back, you turn the other cheek. That means that you don’t fight your enemies, you pray for them. That means you don’t retaliate when someone does you wrong, you forgive them. It means the ones who appear to have the most power are, in fact powerless. And the ones who appear to be the lowest of the low, are the greatest. The secret to being happy in this life can’t be found in proving how much better you are than other people; it’s about giving yourself completely in love.” “If you want to follow me, deny yourself,” he said. “Take up your cross and follow me.” He doesn’t say anything about becoming successful in the eyes of the world, or holy and pure people. “Deny yourself,” he says. Stop living as the façade you’re presenting to the world, the person who has it all together, and get real. Be your authentic self. The person God created you to be, created in the image of a God who is love. 

 

That’s what Jesus taught, again and again, in as many ways as possible. His life was about non-violence. The bottom line for Jesus, the new commandment he wanted to impress upon his followers more than anything else was, “Love one another.” He said this after he demonstrated what that love looks like. It looks like a master getting down on his hands and knees and washing the feet of his students. 

 

I’ve come to the conclusion that the opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s violence. And, by violence, I don’t just mean physically harming another. I mean whenever we assert our power over another in a way that is harmful to them, that’s violence. To demonstrate what love looks like, as an act completely devoid of violence, Jesus washed their feet. 

 

I’m not sure we can ever really understand Jesus if we don’t come to terms with the sin of violence that has permeated our world from the beginning. I don’t know if we can ever rid ourselves of our addiction to violence, but I do know that our violent nature is not what connects us to God. What connects us to God is our loving nature. Jesus was all love without the violence. And when we follow Jesus, we love. 

 

We seem to have a blind spot when it comes to violence. Maybe because we we are so accustomed to violence in our culture that we have little awareness of what it’s done to us. It takes something big for us to notice, something so shocking that we can hardly bear the thought of it. Like the slaughter of innocent babies in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, or the slaughter of innocent school children in Newtown, a year ago. We’ll look at these events as if they are anomalies, strange occurrences that appeared out of the blue, for no apparent reason, and we wonder, how could such things happen? When, in fact, they are the inevitable result of what happens when you eat, sleep and breathe violence.

 

We have an addiction to violence in our culture. And the first step in dealing with an addiction is admitting that you have a problem. 

• Have you ever looked at all the shows that are on T.V., movies, video games, the sports we follow, and considered how much of our entertainment is based on violence?
• Isn’t it incredible how even a great tragedy like Sandy Hook couldn’t get us to budge an inch by passing a single law that would make gun regulation more reasonable?
• How might our leaders operate differently if they stopped working so hard to exert their power over others by proving they’re right and everyone else is wrong?
• How would our parenting be different if we stopped teaching children that the way to resolve conflict is through violence? Let me be more specific here. Yes, I’m talking about spanking. Or insisting that the child who is bullied at school stand up for himself and fight back.
• For that matter, will we ever stop belittling other people to make ourselves feel bigger?
• How would our interactions with the people we encounter in our everyday lives be different if we didn’t see them as obstacles to manipulate or control so we can get what we want from them?
• How would the way we do business change if we weren’t so preoccupied with obliterating the competition?
• What would it be like if the whole concept of war became obsolete and the resources we now devote to building up our military strength could instead be spent on acts of justice and compassion for the world’s poor?
• How would our relationships with those closest to us be transformed if we could give ourselves in love by forgiving, and showing mercy, and daring to reveal our vulnerability to one another?

But that’s not the way of the world, is it? If you want to survive in this world, you have to be strong. If you let people see your weakness, you’re going to get trampled. I mean, what would happen if a person really lived without violence like that in our violent world?

 

Well, we know what would happen. And I suppose that’s what we’re trying to avoid. Jesus lived a life of non-violence, a life given in love. And, it got him crucified. But even then, he met that act of supreme violence with love. He could have cursed those who nailed him to that cross. Instead, he continued to deny himself, he forgave them.

 

 Ironically, many Christians completely miss this point, and have used the cross to once again assume that God is angry with us and needed somebody to pay, so Jesus had to be sacrificed. Doesn’t that primitive explanation of the cross completely miss the whole point of Jesus’ life? He died as he lived. As a God who is confronted the violence of this world with love.

 

So, where does that leave us, as people who want to follow Jesus and yet are, in fact, a lot more like Herod than we are like Jesus? As people who are addicted to violence, how do we love as he loved? Could we turn our church into a twelve-step group that meets regularly to support one another as we struggle with our addiction to violence? I don’t know what it would look like if we dared to be that honest and vulnerable with one another. But I do know that in a church like that, when we read about Jesus’ birth, we would always include Herod in the story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Christmas Message is Rated R: for mature audiences only

At our early Family Christmas Eve service, I read a book called Humphrey’s First Christmas to the children. It’s a delightful book told from the perspective of a camel named Humphrey who traveled with the wise men to see the baby Jesus. Christmas brings with it a lot of stories like this, where animals talk and angels get their wings and a little drummer boy performs for the holy family. It’s a magical time for children.

But if you're hoping to read about the magic of Christmas here, you might want to close this blogpost right now. Because this message isn’t rated G, for children; it’s rated R, for mature audiences only. There’s a big difference. Unfortunately, we may miss the deeper message of the incarnation because somewhere along the line, we got stuck in a child’s understanding of the Christmas story. That stuckness often pushes us as adults to either a) continue to understand Christmas as a child and suspend the use of our well-developed brains, or b) dismiss the story as nothing more than a fairy tale that has no connection to our real lives.

This whole dilemma reflects a larger faith crisis. I hear about it all the time from people who admit to me that they don’t believe in God. They’re often apologetic when they tell me this, as if to say, they really wish they did believe in God, but they just can’t bring themselves to do it. Now, if you’re thinking I’m talking about you, let me assure you that you’re not alone; I hear this more often from church members than you might expect, and I appreciate their honesty.

Because when adults tell me that they don’t believe in God, it’s most often the case that they don’t believe in the God they learned about in Sunday school when they were a kid. As thinking adults, they just can’t bring themselves to believe in that God. I have to applaud them for that because I can’t bring myself to believe in that God, either.

If you ask children to draw a picture of God, they will typically draw an old man sitting on a thrown with a long white beard. Maybe that works for kids, but it doesn’t work for adults.

As children, we believed everything adults told us at face value and we had no problem accepting ideas that were less than rational.  But then, somewhere around 15 or 16, a part of our brains started to develop that gave us the ability to think critically. We doubted and we questioned.

This is about the time the kids who are paying attention will notice the inconsistencies in Bible stories. And they’ll question information that doesn’t fit what they know to be scientifically possible. It’s just not rational to believe that a virgin can have a baby, for example. How can they possibly believe such a thing?   

It’s a challenging time, but necessary time in order to evolve from the faith of childhood to the faith of an adult. The task of adolescence, after all, is to break away from your parents and become your own person. As a person of faith, it’s also important to break away from a faith that’s based on all that stuff that your parents and other adults told you was true. This is the time to find your own truth.

Eventually, adults who continue to grow in the faith will come to realize that whether or not the stories of the faith are historically factual or scientifically possible isn’t really the point. The real point is, are they true? Truth transcends the facts. Is there truth in these stories? Truth that’s big enough to hold my life experience?

The real message of Christmas challenges us to grow up. An age appropriate telling of the Christmas story for adults has little to do with the sweet Christmas pageants we participated in as children. It’s about the deeper truth of the story, the truth of the incarnation.

Children think of God as someone who is a separate being, apart from us, somewhere looking down on us, making things happen. Unfortunately, many adults seem to be stuck in this very primitive understanding of God, as well.  If that’s who God is, I can understand why so many people have trouble buying into it.

Seeing God as distant and detached from us, out there somewhere doing stuff to us, like he’s moving the pieces on a chess board, leads us to ask questions like, “Why did God do this to me?” or “How can God allow this to happen?” At its worst, it’s used to pronounce judgment upon others, “God will reward you, or punish you for what you’ve done.” That way of thinking runs completely against the story of the incarnation, God becoming flesh. It seems to resonate with the popular song, “From a distance, God is watching us.” While the truth of the incarnation, is more in line with another song: “What if God was one of us, just a stranger on the bus.”

For the message of Christmas is that God IS one of us. There is no division between the realm of God and our very human realm.  God is not separated from us; God is in our midst. God is a part of us; we are a part of God. God works within us, and beside us, and between us, and among us. John describes it so well in his first letter when he says that “no one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.”  God is as close as that person sitting next to you.

The faith of our childhood wants to separate God from us, but the adult story of Christmas, the story of the incarnation, just won’t allow it.

Really, it’s perfect that Jesus would enter into our human experience by being born the way we all are. As a child, I always pictured Mary glowing, a halo above her head and a smile on her face like the Mona Lisa. That was before I ever had a baby myself, and I know better now. The stuff emanating from Mary wasn’t love’s pure light. It was blood and guts and all kinds of nasty stuff that made a real mess. She wasn’t smiling, she was hollering her head off like any other woman who’s giving birth. It’s not a pretty way to make an entrance, and our tendency to ignore the grisly reality of Jesus’ birth  says a lot about our discomfort with the truth of the incarnation.

God doesn’t live somewhere up in the sky, removed from the real stuff of this world. God isn’t only present in Temples and churches, in beautiful sunrises and moonlit nights, in golden wrapped gifts under a twinkling tree, or in sentimental Christmas stories. God’s son Jesus was born amongst the animals. When he took his first breath, the air was heavy with the stinging smell of cow dung.

We get ourselves in a lot of trouble when we start deciding where God is present and where God is not, what is holy and what is not. The truth of the incarnation is that all life is holy, and God is present in all aspects of this life, even where we would least expect it. Because of the incarnation, we can’t point to any person or any place and say, God is absent. The truth of Christ’s nativity is that wherever you are certain God couldn’t possibly be, there God is. I know it may be hard to get your head around it, but God is even present at the Walmart on Independence Avenue on Christmas Eve. I don’t know how it works, but I know it’s true. It’s not magic, but it’s a mystery.

How is that possible? How is it possible that the creator of the Universe should take on flesh and blood? That he should befriend the most despised people on earth? That he would dare to touch people with dreaded diseases? That he should die on a cross between two criminals?

While the faith of a child may marvel at the magic of Christmas, the faith of an adult marvels at the mystery of Christmas. The truth of Christmas is not that God had a cute little son who never cried when he was laid in a manger. The truth of Christmas is that little baby cried just as we all do. The truth of Christmas is Emmanuel: God with us.

Something I can count on

There are certain things I can count on for Christmas. Despite my best efforts to stay healthy, I always end up with a nasty cold and a scratchy throat. After devoting the month of December to pumping myself with Zicam and large doses of vitamin C, avoiding crowds and washing my hands after touching anything in a public place, I thought I could escape the inevitable. But this morning, December 23, when I woke up, I discovered that the unwelcome guest I’ve spent so many Christmases with is back. Oh, goody.

I can count on not sleeping well the night of December 23. Not even the cold meds will help. I’m just too hyped about Christmas Eve, and not in a good way.  The weight of Christmas expectations bear down on me. I don’t want to be the one who ruins Christmas for the people who come to worship with us at Holy Trinity. I don’t want to leave anything to chance. I pick at my sermon until it bears only a slight resemblance to my original draft. I wonder what hidden mistake that I didn’t catch in the bulletin will jump up and smack me in the face during the service. I highlight every word I’m going to say. I make lists of details I will need to tend to as soon as I arrive at the church, last minute instructions I need to give to the assisting minister, and the organist, and the lector, and the ushers (all people who know perfectly well what to do without the last minute meddling of their pastor). I can’t remember how it works when we light the candles at the end. Do I go to the ushers to light their candles? Do they come to me? Does it matter? More than anything, I need a good night’s sleep, and that’s exactly what I won’t get. Yep, I can count on it.

I also can count on having an episode of feeling sorry for my poor, pitiful self because I live so far away from my family. I’ll remember how it felt to be with my brother and sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins on Christmas when I was a kid, and how it felt to spend Christmas with my own kids back when my whole world revolved around them, and I’ll wonder what happened. It’s just wrong. How did I come to this? And I’ll wallow in my sorrow as if it just occurred to me that I’m all alone. It often sneaks up on me when I’m watching some sentimental, sappy holiday movie on T.V. (or a greeting card commercial) and all of a sudden I start sobbing uncontrollably. It happened just last night, in fact.  I tried really hard to get a grip, but I lost it.

Are you depressed yet? Well, all of this is just leading up to the one thing I can count on at Christmastime that fills me enough to keep me going for the next year. It happens without fail on Christmas Eve when I’m standing behind the altar holding a lit candle in my hand and I look out over a sea of candles that illuminate the faces of God’s saints as we sing “Silent Night” together. This is the family I am spending my Christmases with these days. I’m far from alone. And they don’t care if there is a mistake in the bulletin. They don’t care if my sermon is a dud. They don’t care if I forget how to light the ushers’ candles. It doesn’t even matter if I can’t sing because I’ve lost my voice. Because, in that moment, it always becomes quite clear to me that Christmas was Christmas long before I came along, and Christmas will still be Christmas long after I’m gone. I’ve been blessed to experience it through the years in 62 different ways and counting. Every one of those Christmases and the people I’ve shared them with comes crashing together in that moment when “all is calm, all is bright.”

Yes, lately there are some things about Christmas that I’ve come to count on. Many of them involve struggle for me. But the one I treasure the most is that transcendent moment with the people of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on The Plaza. The song is there, the love is there, God is there. Just as surely as Christ was born on this earth, in that moment, he is born in us, in our community. It’s something I can count on.

 

 

 

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Why I'm hooked on Olivia Pope

I’ve been thinking a lot about the appeal of the TV show Scandal. The first time I watched it I thought it was poorly written, much like a soap opera. The plot twists were so abrupt that I was getting whiplash from being jerked around so much, and it was insulting. Bleh. I’m not falling for this slop, I thought.

But then, so many of my friends were into it that I wondered if I was missing something. So, over the summer, I returned to it, and got caught up on Netflix. And, despite the plot that leaves me sighing, *oh, pa-leese*, I kept watching. Why? I got hooked on Olivia Pope. 

For starters, a woman who seems almost omnipotent, is way cool. Liv has the strength and determination to handle any crisis and she exudes a confidence that leads her clients to believe in her. Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone like Olivia Pope in your corner -- someone you could trust with any problem, knowing she’ll fix it for you, even when you make a royal mess of your life? Oh, yeah. No matter how much they’re paying her, it couldn’t be enough. She is a badass woman. I admire that because I’ve tried to be a badass woman from time to time, and I know how hard is to convince other people that you really are badass. Liv manages to pull it off in a way that I never could.

But the most interesting thing about Olivia Pope isn’t her superhuman power. What’s most interesting is that it’s a complete façade. Her life is all about making things appear acceptable when they are teetering on the rim of the toilet.  In particular, her personal life is a disaster. She’s in love with a man she can never have, and continues to live with the dream of marrying him some day, when she has to know better. Her father is a monster she can’t get away from, and pretty much everything in her life is a lie. Some of those lies she has participated in, but many of them have been thrust upon her. For someone who appears to be all-powerful in public life, in her private life, she has been victimized again and again and she's struggling to survive.

Liv is an exaggerated version of every woman, and I suspect every man, too. We work really hard at presenting a persona to the world in which we are completely in control. We know what we’re doing. We can take care of ourselves, and we’re up to taking care of other people, too. But, we’re like the proverbial duck, floating along on the surface of the lake, looking like we have it all together, while under the surface, we’re paddling like hell to keep up. Olivia Pope reminds me of how inauthentic our lives can be when we deny our own vulnerability, and how tragic this can be for us, and everyone around us.

But then, there’s something that redeems Liv. And that's the odd little family she’s formed. Although they're at least as flawed as she is, they provide her with all the protection she needs to keep from self-destructing. Where would she be without them? The same place they would be without her. Dead.

For me, the appeal of Scandal is the way it taps into something so true about us, despite its far-fetched story-line. It portrays a woman who works really hard to maintain an illusion of competence in the world, which is the antithesis of who she really is underneath it all. She is so good at convincing people of her superhuman powers, that they entrust her with their lives. The irony is that if they knew how messed up her own life was, they would never turn to her for help. And then,  she has the good fortune, or good sense, to surround herself with a community of people who understand who she really is, beneath the façade. They know her, they see her, they love her. And she trusts that they’ll always have her back. That's the ironic double-twist summersault to the irony of her life. Liv, the one who deceives the world to get people to trust her, only trusts the people in her own life who can see her authentic self. Oh, that's good stuff!

The very human themes of authenticity, vulnerability and trust are all there. That’s what keeps me tuning in.  Come to think of it, that’s also what’s kept me in the Church all these years. Yep, it's good stuff.

A Miserable Failure as a King

“If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.” The sign they tacked above his head while he hung on a cross read:  “This is the King of the Jews.” The thief crucified next to him wanted Jesus to remember him when he came into his kingdom. And yet, never once did Jesus refer to himself as a king. Not here, not anywhere.

The whole idea of Jesus being a king never came from him. It came from people who lived in a world where the most powerful among them were kings. If you remember the story of God’s people in the Old Testament, you may recall how God led them out of slavery in Egypt into the Promised Land. And, along the way, God formed them into a nation.

In the beginning, God chose people like Moses to lead his people. We can read about this period in the book of Judges. But almost from the get-go, God’s people were whining that they wanted to have a king, like all the other nations. God advised against it, telling them that would be a huge mistake. But they wouldn’t stop whining, so finally God gave them a king. But no king ever solved their problems. In many respects, kings only added to their problems.

Why is it that people long for a king? It’s puzzling. I can understand what’s in it for the king. But what’s in it for the people? Even in a democracy like ours, we have this propensity to long for someone who fills the role of king for us. We’re always looking for the next one to crown. As we remember the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, I think back on those days, and it seems like he came as close as any American could come to royalty. People even refer to the time of his presidency as Camelot. And yet, now, 50 years later, we know a lot more about his presidency and we’re able to look at it more objectively. To say that Kennedy was a flawed man is an understatement. King-making is always dangerous. The basic problem with kings is the power we give them. Is it possible to have a king without power?

If you’re really a king, prove it, Jesus. Now’s your big chance. No king is going to die on a cross if he can help it. Make your move, Jesus. Well, if a king is all about power, Jesus proves that he is no king. And that’s the irony of the Christ story. We call him a king. But his life was as far removed from  the life of a king as a person can get. The only way to recognize Jesus as a king is by flipping the definition of a king on its head. 

First, there is the way that a king would typically deal with those who attack him. He would retaliate. He would obliterate his enemies in a way that showed his strength so that nobody else would dare make a move against him again. That’s the way kings rule. Through fear and intimidation and brute force. But Jesus is the one who taught his followers to turn the other cheek and pray for their enemies; he is put to death by his enemies without a fight. Not only that, but, here’s the kicker. He actually forgave the ones who put him there. They stood there and mocked him, after nailing him to a cross, and instead of lashing out at them, he forgave them.

And then there were the religious leaders and the Roman soldiers, who challenged him to save himself. We know that self preservation is the most basic human response to any threatening situation.  We respond to a threat by fighting back or running away (fight or flight). And yet, Jesus does neither. How is that possible? He refuses to save himself.

Now, saving yourself isn’t only about protecting yourself from those who want to do you bodily harm. So much of the interaction we have with other people is about saving ourselves. We save ourselves whenever we want other people to like us. We want to look good to them. We want to save face. And so we present ourselves in ways that are often deceptive; we cover up the parts of ourselves that might cause others to see us in an unfavorable light. We’re always trying to show how we’re better than other people. We may blame someone else for our mistakes. Or it becomes way too important for us to prove that we’re right and the other person is wrong. It’s all a part of saving ourselves.

We had a good discussion about this in my clergy Bible study last week. One of my colleagues, Tim, recalled what had happened the week we met to go over the texts for All Saints Sunday. That week, I had told them I had a great joke I was going to use in my sermon and they asked to hear it. So, I shared it and they all laughed. And then they got quiet… and I knew there was a problem. Finally, Robin asked if there will be children in the congregation when I tell that joke. And I realized that if I told that joke with children present, I’d be in big trouble. So, I didn’t tell it. So last week, when we had a discussion about saving ourselves, Tim recalled how they had saved me from telling that joke on All Saints Sunday.  

And I had to come back with, “Well, it was early in the week. I’m sure that by Sunday I would have figured it out on my own.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I knew they were going to call me on it, and they did. “Yes, save yourself, Nancy.” It was said in good humor, but ouch! That’s exactly what I had done. Rather than admit that I came really close to saying something stupid in a Sunday sermon, I had to save face and insist that I would have figured it out without their assistance. Yep. I just had to save myself.

How is Jesus able to overcome the way we human beings seem to be hard-wired for self-preservation? When he was dying on the cross, he could have at least turned to the ones who put him there and told them off or cursed them as a way of saving himself. But instead, he forgave them. Jesus died  in a way that was consistent with his teaching. Remember how he taught his followers that the if you work hard to save your life, you’re going to end up losing it, and the only way to save your life is by giving it up? So, he didn’t save himself, and in the process, he saved more than himself.

And then we get to the part with the thief on the cross and we can see another example of how Jesus finished his life the way he had lived it. If you had a continuum with a powerful king on one end and the most wretched of the earth on the other end, it would have been enough if Jesus had simply been human and hung out somewhere in the middle, which is pretty much where we are. That would have been enough. But that’s not where he spent his life. He identified with the lowest of the low right up until his death, crucified between two criminals. He was never one to make comments from afar about how we should all be nice to poor people and sinners and the untouchables. He became one of them. He lived and died in a way that is about as far removed from the life of a king that you can imagine, in solidarity with outcasts.

And yet, the thief on the cross seemed to think that Jesus was about to come into his kingdom. Did the thief see something that seemed to elude everyone else? Did he understand that things going on that day at the place called The Skull weren’t what they appeared to be?

Mocked, derided, hung on a cross to die between two thieves. If you’re a king, prove it to us, the crowd jeered. “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing,” he said. They thought he was failing the king test miserably. But the thief who hung beside him seemed to know better. We know better, too. We know he was showing the world what kind of a king he was.

No, he is not like any king this earth has ever known before or since. In many ways, he was more of an anti-king than a king. Because kings are supposed to be powerful. And yet, the irony is that he had a power greater than any earthly king has ever had. By emptying himself of all power and giving himself in love, he showed us what true power looks like.