Source of Hope

First, a small point of personal privilege. I think it began in the 8th grade when I started playing basketball, but "getting into double figures" has always been a source of great satisfaction. To average double figures as a basketball player was a goal. Even in the pro's they count the double double and triple doubles of the stars. Then when I became the Pastor of Bethel Presbyterian Church I was the 10th pastor in their 225 year history. The first four ministers served for a 160 years. Yeah, the average pastorate was 40 years each. The next six did not do as well. But I told them how excited I was to be the pastor who reached double figures. I was the first one to get double figures. Now I am excited and pleased to get double figures in the followers of this blog. There are 10 people who follow this blog. And I am very grateful to all of them.

A friend just suggested that the Bible may be called the Good Book, but when it comes to reading a book, most people would rather have a naughty book. People claim to believe what the Bible says but they do not know what it says. Today is celebrated in the Christian tradition as Pentecost Sunday when the Holy Spirit was given to the disciples. The Spirit of anything is the power that gives it life. That is why Mary Kay and Wal Mart have all those pep rallies and associates gatherings. The power of the Marines is its spirit. The Spirit gives energy, power, determination, and joy. The Spirit comes to a group as it lives and struggles together for a purpose. The Christian spirit is in the church as it lives and struggles to be the body of Christ. Muslims have a Spirit.

One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is to give life to the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit is the gift that brings us into contact with the story of the Scriptures so that those stories are part of our living conversation. The Holy Spirit brings alive the stories of the Scriptures so that we read those stories as stories of real people with real lives, with real challenges, with real doubts, and with real decisions. The Voice of God did not speak to Moses, Joseph, Abraham, Jeremiah, and the rest any more clearly than the Voice of God whispers to us. The Spirit of God enables us to realize that the presence of God is found in the give and take of every day life. There were lots of other voices and powers claiming to be God's voice in Jeremiah's day.

The Holy Spirit is given to give encouragement to us as we read the Scriptures to hope that whereas those in the past have found God in the midst of their daily, average, ordinary lives so too we will hear and find the voice of God as we struggle to hear it in our confused and complicated lives. The Holy Spirit comes to bring to life the struggle to hear and to be faithful to what we hear. The Holy Spirit comes in fellowship with others who are searching and who know that the search and the seeking after truth and justice matter. It is not so much that God did stuff in the past, the Holy Spirit brings those stories alive so that we might be alert to where that voice is speaking now.

Not Getting What you Want?

We were driving through eastern North Carolina. We would go through these little communities. There would be four shops, a gas station, and ten churches. There was all the evidence you need for why the South is called the Bible Belt. The buildings were small. There were of all kinds of construction. They had all kinds of different names: First Divine Temple of the Living God; The Higher Hope; Missionary Zion Apostles; Redeemer's Home.

I mentioned that on the Henderson Board of Adjustment of the City Zoning, we had had more requests for special use permits for churches than any other request. The person I was riding with said something about how much better it would be to build one big church and bring them all together. But then she said that she could understand why people would keep looking for a church. "If they are not getting what they want from a church, they ought to check out others until they find what they need."

That thought provoked from me the response, "Get what they wanted? There is a very long line of people in the Bible who never got what they wanted from God. Moses did not want the job. Jeremiah did not want the job of being a prophet. Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh. Daniel did not want to go into the Lion's den. Jesus did not want to go to the Cross. Paul was opposed to the whole Christian movement. Where did we get the idea that we know what we need in our spiritual life? In fact, maybe the place where you are hearing exactly what you don't want to hear is the place where God is most directly dealing with you."

In fact, I would be willing to wager that it is more often than not where we are being told what we do not want to hear that we have the chance of being guided by the Holy.

The Greater of These

NBC Nightly News carried the story. The man had been in prison for thirty years. He had been convicted of rape of an eleven year old girl. Throughout those thirty years he always maintained that he had not committed the rape. Finally science and technology progressed, and out of an old blanket that had been kept in the evidence room, they were able to find some DNA of the man who committed the rape. It was not the DNA of the man who had been in prison for thirty years. The Nightly News story was about the man's release,declaration of innocence, and return to civilization.

While being interviewed all the man could do was talk about how grateful he was to be out; how excited he was to be home; what a delight to walk around and see all the things like cell phones, ipod, laptops, and ipads at the malls. He was planning on seeing a Cavalier basketball game in person as guest of the team.

It was not a long interview and it was only a few days after he had had the verdict set aside, released, and his record cleared when they talked with him. His reaction during the interview was all in the direction of joy, thanksgiving, release, and celebration.

The whole story caused me to wonder about our human responses to the things that happen to us. It would seem to me that there might be two major responses in him: great joy and thanksgiving for being released and great anger,resentment,sorrow and hostility towards the system that never believed him and took thirty years away from him. Thanksgiving is the dominant response now. Does the anger come later? Do they alternate in his days. Some days thinking how wonderful it is to be out finally. Some days tasting bitterness for all the years that were taken from him.

Is his thanksgiving and delight a personal response and others might be more consumed by bitterness? Is there a pattern that those who have been captured and imprisoned for a long time are so relieved and happy to be finally freed that the joy overwhelms the heart and thanksgiving is the dominant response? Will there come moments when he regrets being free and would like the security and routine of his former life?

The story is a source of lots of interesting questions about human emotions. Lots of people are in their own prisons and are offered freedom and pardon. Is thanksgiving and celebration the abiding dominant reaction to freedom?

Anger and Frustration

The room was full of politics. All of us there were waiting and watching the election returns of the May Primary. The distinguished gentleman next to me was observing that "the Tea Party Revolution" was going to be a major factor in the coming election in November 2010. "Whatever passion and anger that is driving that crowd is going to have to be acknowledged and dealt with," he said.

There was more conversation about the world of politics, and he later commented that there was an inevitable merging of government agencies that regulate industries with the industries themselves. EPA regulators become officers in corporations that have environmental issues and corporate officers are appointed to regulatory agencies. Security and Exchange Commission eventually gets identical to investment firms. The people who are supposed to regulate industries are best friends with the people in the industries.

Perhaps that is one of the sources for the anger and frustration of the Tea Party people. Government is not working for the people. I think a lot of us believe that Government is supposed to be on the citizen's side. Government is supposed, we hear so often, to work for the little people. But government is not working that way.
Government is supposed to protect miners from disasters, but the Government agency that regulates mines finds violations of safety issues but cannot make the corporation comply. Government is supposed to protect us from environmental crisis but the agencies that regulation the oil industry do not require planning for disasters. One chance in a thousand is dismissed as "never happen." The Food and Drug administration is supposed to protect us from tainted food, but again and again violations and no action.

There is great joy and celebration when agencies cooperate and capture a terrorists in 54 hours. That shows that government can work. That is what we want. We want government to protect us from the dangers. There is greed and evil in all of us and it is even greater in corporations. There are national problems that only national government is big enough to address. Government is suppose to keep those evil powers in check. But the anger and frustration is that government is no working for us.

The immigration issue is an issue that needs national solution, but Government is not working. Airline industries need to be required to do safety inspections but Government deregulated them. Who inspects sheet rock from China for construction or toys with lead paint? Why does the Auto industry get to tell Congress how many miles per gallon they want? Government is supposed to work to protect the people from pollution.

John Calvin set up the Presbyterian form of government because of the doctrine of depravity of humanity. All of us are tainted with selfishness and pride. The job of the committee is put limits on the temptations of each other. I try to limit your reach of selfishness and you limit mine. As the Supreme Court has just reaffirmed Corporations are individuals in the law. Well, we need some power to be the one who watches the reach of selfishness and greed in the corporations and government is supposed to be that watcher. It is not working or it is doing a very poor job of it. No wonder a lot of people are angry and frustrated and ready to "revolt."

Cash Cow

There are many good reasons to suspect that the life blood of politics is money. That fact is not new or something unknown by others. And I am certain that what I have suddenly realized has been common knowledge for others for a very long time. What I suspect is that there are certain political issues that do not get solved in Congress because their debate is a great source of money. They are the hot ticket issues that generate great passion and thus great contributions. They are brought up and argued and then they are allowed to fade unsolved because they produce great waves of contributions to politics.

My hunch would be that Immigration Reform is one of these. It is not a complicated nor difficult problem to solve. Even President George W. Bush was able to come up with a good plan. But it is an issue that has great passion in it and thus swells the bank accounts of parties on both sides.

It is an issue that should be easily compromised. There are some very clear givens. There is no way we are going to send all of them home. There is no way politically that a bill will get pass that just grants "amnesty" to all of them. So it would seem to me that the reform would include something about better border regulation; a process by which all who are here who want to become legal come forward and confess that they have violated the law. There will then need to be some kind of punishment. A Fine of some size. The punishment is one of those places where compromise is needed to find a good balance. There would need to be avenues for all who are here illegally to become legal, either citizenship or work papers. Again the steps for citizenship or legal work status can be brokered. Those who have criminal records would be subject to deportation. There are lots of little pieces that would need to be included but that is where good political "horse trading" would be wonderful.

Neglect of this issue continues to make it worse. But solving it would probably deprive the body politics of a great cash cow. But it is certainly true that the measure passed in Arizona to deal with it appears to me to be a great violation of our American rights under the Bill of Rights.

The Preacher's Urban Legend

I heard it again this week at a lunch with other ministers. One of them was reporting that the church secretary said that all the former minister did was close his office door and pull out an old sermon and say this will preach. Other person said well now all you have to do is download it from the Internet.

Now I will confess that there were a few special services like Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday when I told a story of grace and over the years I was a pastor I told the same story several times at those special services. One year I read an article that Fred Craddock wrote that said congregations like to hear sermons repeated, they can kind of preach along as people sing along with songs they know. "Here comes the good part." So for a six week period during one summer I asked the congregation to tell me some sermons they knew and I would "re-preach" them during those weeks. Most members said they didn't remember any, but a few gave me some titles and we got through the summer.

Professor Tom Long, a widely known preacher in Presbyterian Church who does about 3 guest visits to churches each month, reported to me that he usually took three sermons he had used often and one he was working on to each place where he was doing a guest visitation. So indeed some sermons get preached again. A friend of mine early in my ministry put it this way:"Every sermon that deserves to be preached once, is worthy to be preached again and often. The problem is most sermons do not deserve to be preached the first time. We just preach them because we have to have something to say on Sunday.

But most of the local pastors and preachers I know, and I am in this group, work very hard every week to have something ready for Sunday morning. It is never as good as they hoped. They, and I, never preach it as well as they would want to, and it if it was prepared for this week's people, it is never appropriate for next week's or next year's people without extensive work. It is one of the stereotypes and myths that preachers just have to live with.

National Day of Prayer

Recently a Federal Judge has declared the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional. Not being a lawyer or a constitutional scholar I have to leave some of the legal and technical matters to others. But I do have some questions and ramblings on this.

First, I know that we have in lots of communities, we have one in this community, preachers who turns the National Day of Prayer into a Christian evangelical revival. There are three or four scheduled events in different parts of our town, and every one is a full blown testimony to Jesus. So I can understand why it might be possible for a Federal Judge to see the National Day of Prayer as an effort to establish the Christian religion over others. That would be contrary to the law that Congress will make no law to establish one religion over another.

However, the establishing a National Day of Prayer does not necessarily have to establish one religion over another. From what I have read most other religions have a practice of prayer and meditation. Just like Thanksgiving Day declaration does not say one has to go into a Christian church, the proclamations recently that I have read call for people to go into their place of worship and give thanks. A National Day of Prayer is a day on which all people are invited to pray, like AA, to the higher power however they define or identify it. Certainly in these days of heated rhetoric it would be a good idea for all of us to take a moment to remember that neither side is perfect, that neither side is God and has all the answers, and neither side knows what the future brings because the future is in the hands of the mystery of tomorrow. It is not a bad thing to have a National Day of Prayer on which Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Taoists, and all others lift up to the needs and the concerns of this country to the Holy One. Heaven knows, our country's power and pride need some kind of humbling.

Secondly, on a much more general note, it seems to me that we have a very confused and complicated public relationship with religion in our politics. When 9/11 happened nobody declared all those prayer services and worship events to be unconstitutional. When old Presidents die we don't rule their public funeral services to be unconstitutional. When all the candidates say "God Bless America" after all their speeches, no one I have heard files suit.

The old argument against the Ten Commandments in courtrooms always troubled me as well because they were declared offensive as the establishment of one religion over others. The Ten Commandments are part of the tradition of three, at least, major religions. God is not a term that is solely the property of Christianity. We all need to remember that. A National Day of Prayer is not addressed just to Christians.