Depressing

There was a story of the Embarqmail Home page. The story says that The Crystal Cathedral and Robert H. Schuller have relieved the Rev. Robert A. Schuller of his duties as preacher at the Cathedral. The Elder Schuller had placed the mantle of authority on his son in an emotional service in 2006. Now in a written statement from the President of the corporation of the church the two Schullers had different visions of what the ministry was to be and how the ministry should be conducted.

There were two thoughts that came to mind: One, that God seldom calls families to preach. One of the great Old Testament leaders, Samuel, whose children turned out to be failures. It does not appear that any of the disciples had children who became leaders in the church. At least, I know of none. Martin Luther, John Calvin, do not seemed to have had children who followed or lived up to their father's place in the church. Franklin Graham is no Billy Graham. Joel Osteen is the son of a successful preacher, but Joel's father was a powerful pentecostal evangelical preacher and Joel is a long way from his father. David Buttrick is not the preacher that George Buttrick was. The list could be expanded. Robert A. Schuller is not the entertainer or motivational speaker that his father was. Actually the few times I hear the son, he had a lot more Christianity in him than his father.

The second fact was where this story was reported. It was reported in the Entertainment section of the news. What a sad and disappointing reality! The preaching of the Christian faith in the Crystal Cathedral is considered simply entertainment. Surely the presentation of the Christian faith has to be something more and different than entertainment where the events of the life of Britney Spears are reported. Perhaps that is what was eventually wrong with the Crystal Cathedral: the father was a better entertainer than his son and the ratings dropped. The church is not called to be a place of entertainment.

He came to bring a sword, to lite a fire, to cause a division of the house.

What is normal?

She sells real estate on the coast of North Carolina. When asked how things were selling now in the midst of the "credit crisis," she said that things were back to normal. Things were now back to the way they were when she started the business. Things were back to the times when the customer had to have some money to put down. Things were back to where they had to run credit checks and the buyer had to have good credit to get a loan. Things were back, she said, to the way the business used to be.

She made me realize how much of a fantasy world we have been living in. The dream of everybody getting rich in real estate, the dream of Social Security investments in the market that would just keep getting larger and larger, the dream that all of our problems would be solved by capitalism were just that dreams and illusions. I am not happy losing a third of my value in my investments. But as one who has made a life of trying to live by the stories in the Bible, I must confess that I am not surprised by the greed that has consumed us. The man who was working out with me in the Y said he used to believe that his broker at least had an interest in seeing that his clients made money as well as himself. Now he is not sure. Speculators, hedge funds, investment rating firms, CEO's with amazing salaries, million dollar bonsuses, all suggest that greed was working overtime. But the sin of greed was in all of us. The Christian story is such that we are never surprised by the presence of evil in all of us.

The other thing that the real estate salesperson's remarks did for me was to make me terribly thankful for the things I do have, for the life I have had, for the fact that what I have is paid for, for the fact that the normal life was always good enough. Even now in the midst of the world wide economic challenges when we look around at the world around us, it takes a lot of gall to complain. We have so many blessings that we take for granted that we do not even acknowledge. We just keep forgetting what "normal" is.

From the other side

For forty years every three years there would come a time when I had to read the story Jesus told about the farmer who hired day laborers. Once every three years the story would come up in the list of scriptures to read on Sunday. This is the story of the farmer who went early in the morning to the place where day workers gather and hired the people who were there. When he hired them they agreed on the price he would pay them for the day's work. He took them to the farm and put them to work. Then about noon, he had to go back to town so he dropped by the place and saw some more people, and he hired them. Turns out he was back in town about three o'clock and he rounded up the workers who had gathered there in the afternoon. When the end of the day came, and the farmer paid off the workers, he called out the last ones hired and he gave them the pay that he had agreed to pay the workers he hired in the morning. He gave those who were hired last the same pay.
Those who had worked all day were upset and angry that they did not get paid more if they had worked more. But they got paid what they had agreed was a good pay for a day's work.
This is a hard story for those who want life to be fair. It rubs against our sense of justice and equity. Fairness is not present in this story. But for the forty years I have worked with this story, I have never met a person who read this story from the point of view of the person who got hired last. Everybody who has discussed this story with me took the position of those who had worked hard all day, and they were outraged.
Nobody has thought about the hard working people who cannot find work. Those who show up at the day labor site every morning hoping to get picked up for a day's pay. Nobody has imagined what it must be like to have a family and children and worry every morning whether there would be somebody looking for workers so that you might make enough to buy food for the day. Nobody I have ever taught this story too thought about what it must have been like for those who had not been picked or who had not been able to get to the place on time. Maybe somebody was sick at home and the worker had not been able to get out of the house by early morning. Maybe there were other complications. The best they could do was to get there by mid-day and worry about missing a whole day. Where would they get the money for supper? Then they get hired by the farmer to work. At least, they think they will get a little something. Maybe enough for bread and milk. Then he pays them the whole day's pay. What a delight. What a surprise. What a wondering thing. They were going to be able to take food home tonight. They did not have to go home and be a failure at home for not getting work. They had been given a blessing.
After all most of us have not worked for all the blessings we have gotten. We have worked the last few hours on major projects and gathered the great benefits. We have not put in the sweat and labor to develop the internet, but we get the full benefit of it. We have not produced the food, but we get the full array of products we can choose from. Most of us get more than we deserve and are treated better than we have earned. There is something terribly wrong with the Christian church that has nobody in its midst that rejoices at the hearing of this story. For we are all the ones who have come to the work late and get the full benefit of the master.

Telling the Truth?

If you ask them, they would all say they are telling the truth. There is probably no better time to see so clearly how complicated and relative truth can be than election campaigns. Each side says tells things about the other side which they claim are true, but make the rest of us realize how misleading those charges can be. One candidates claims that the other voted to raise taxes. Turns out the other candidate did raise the rate of taxes but reduce the amount on which the taxes would be applied and so actually reduce the tax bill, but did vote to raise the rate. Another candidate claims that the other candidate drove the state into deep debt. But what really happened was that bond issues for important projects were passed by the voters upon the recommendation of the committee this person was the chairperson. Yes the state did increase the debt of the state, but it was a debt that was accepted by the voters. Or one claims that the other is for big government, high taxes, and spending programs when it has been their own party who has always increased the national debt and who has had spending programs not even on the budget.
The political campaigns are just a small piece of the bigger question that Pilate asked about what is truth. The campaigns show us that by taking just a piece of a story and using it truth can sound so different and so contrary to what we would like to see. But the same story is told by the people in economic positions. What is the financial reality? Bearish or bullish? Each person picks pieces of data and selects some facts. Then they declare their version of the truth.
Educators, military advisers, and all sorts of experts pick out a few of the aspects of their field and declare they are telling us the truth.
We are certainly engaged in that kind of fight within the great Christian community. Different groups of believers pick out different passages of scripture they want to focus on and then call what they have the truth. The struggle between religious also works on the different claims to ultimate truth.
What I find so fascinating about what I understand about the Grace Jesus gave and offered is that you and I do not have to be right. God in Christ has already made forgiveness happen, and we are invited to live in a world where we can care about each other, the planet, and ourselves without having to be "right" and without having to prove the other people wrong. I don't know whether or not this is the truth, but the story that has been a blessing to me says that God has already made forgiven available to everybody.