Losing the Way

Someone once compared the church, and all religious organizations, to a NASCAR race. Christian people, Jews, Muslims and other followers of the faith were in the race. Like St. Paul said, they pressed on to win the race, but the Church was to be like the pit crew. The Temple or the Synagogue was to be the place where disciples would go to be supplied with fuel, with adjustments, with new resources to run the race. The parable went on to suggest that the pit crew began to make little adjustments to make life in the pit crew a little easier. They put in a drink and snack machine. Then they wanted to put a roof over the pit area. The crew later wanted to build sides under the roof to cut down on the noise and the wind blowing. Then someone suggested that they just enclose the whole thing and put in air-conditioning. Once the air-conditioning got put in, the crew members were a lot less eager to go outside and work on the cars. They took their time getting up and going out. It was hot out there. They asked for a television so they could watch the race from inside their pit accommodations. Needless to say they very soon seldom had a winning participant in the race.

I actually saw something of this happen in our community. I think they are now trying to get back on track, but there was an agency that began as a soup kitchen. Their purpose was to provide a hot lunch for anybody who came to their place at noon. They were good at this and they had the support of about 60 churches which provided funds for this soup kitchen. The people who came would ask the servers if they could help with rent and food or other emergencies. The leaders began to look into how they might respond and so they opened a food pantry with can goods and put some money in a program of vouchers for rent, and utilities. That went along for awhile and then there were a few requests for shelter on cold winter nights. The Director suggested to the Board that the upstairs be used by him to allow somebody to spend the night. That idea grew into a whole effort to buy the Little Hotel, to convert an old hospital into a shelter. Both of which did not work out. But the idea of shelter continued and the problem of battered women came up and the Board got off in applying for State and Federal grants for domestic violence protection, and the soup kitchen, the food pantry, and the churches just got forgotten in the mix Now the soup kitchen, the pantry and the vouchers are struggling to survive. The Board has had a lot of debt. The first thing got lost in a lot of other good things. The best became a victim of other goods.

It is so easy to let the central idea, the first idea, the original idea, to get lost or corrupted by a lot of later developments. We begin to take for granted the foundation and start to add a lot of things and the whole thing falls down. I think there is a reminder in the Gospels about seeking first the Kingdom, the most important thing, and the rest will be added. In our personal lives we forget what is central and get caught up with all the little things. In business we try to do too much and forget the purpose of our business. I remember talking with a former buyer for a bankrupt company. "We forgot what we were doing and could not decide whether we were a discount store or a high end story and in the end were neither." It has always been a comfort to me that the Presbyterian tradition has the first question, what is the chief purpose of life-- the answer is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. That is the first thing. To be grateful to the Creator for life and then to enjoy it and share it.
It is not my job to punish or condemn others. We are to enjoy our living and invite others to enjoy theirs as best they can. Certainly there is a dimension which means that when somebody is doing something that prevents the enjoyment of life for somebody, then society needs to act. But the first thing is to give thanks for life, and to enjoy it as best we can. The rest of it may be air-conditioning pit row.

Not that Easy

A 26 year old graduate student wrote to one of those advice columnist and asked for some reason to believe. He asked for some reason for hope. He said his studies in History and Economic gave him nothing but despair. He said there is overpopulation, environmental destruction, increasing violence in religious wars, the gap between rich and poor is ever growing, unemployment, horrible tribal warfare, and pending natural disasters. What is there that offers any reason to be hopeful?

That article in the newspaper was just a public display of what I got in a personal response to an email I sent out to friends at Easter. I said something about the fact that I hoped the annual repetition of the Easter greeting, He is Risen" has not robbed it of the audacity and incredible claim that it makes and that this Easter would find them with a surprise of joy that would help them to hold on to it. One of my older friends, one whom I have admired and respected for a great number of years, wrote back and said that because of some very severe and painful deaths of a few friends, because of his own unstoppable prostate cancer, and other things, he no longer believe in a beneficent God. After a life time of preaching and bearing witness to faith, he has now found he can no longer claim it.

When it comes right down to it, and one wants to take it seriously, this business of faith in the reality of another power, the existence of another reality that impacts and shapes and is involved with this reality is not an easy decision. Evil is a problem for a good God, but goodness is a problem for agnostics. Ethical behavior for human beings is a problem for all of us. Why does the good matter? Someone once said that the amazing coincidences of the creation of the universe by chance is about the same as the publication of the encyclopedia by an explosion in a printing shop. So there is the problem of explain the amazing creation without a supreme being who has intelligence and purpose. But the argument is not absolute.

This business of faith in a good God is not as simply or as easy as some many practitioners of religious groups seems to want to believe. One theologian once suggested that religious groups get young people to commit at age 12 or so because they can get them to make promises at that age that they do not fully understand and then when the young person does start to question, the religious group can apply pressure by saying "But you swore that you did..." The evidence and the rational arguments for or against faith are pretty equal. The evidence is inconclusive from the logical point of view. The decision in either direction is a leap of faith. It is a leap of faith to believe in a good God. It is an equal leap of faith to believe that there is no God. The decision to not believe in a supreme being also is a decision to put something else in that place. Who has ultimate authority? The State? My race? My own mind? But we ought to never suggest to any one that those leaps are easy to make. It is a gamble we have to make with life. We are all lottery players in this game.

Grows in the Dark

There has been a lot of talk about "transparency" in government in the last couple of years. Those running for office seem to think that it is a good thing. Those in government somehow find that it is not that easy to do. But there are some powerful stories around that ought to make those in power think more about making the effort for more honesty, more transparency in their affairs.

Perhaps the biggest scandal which demonstrates one of the great reasons for being open and transparent is the Roman Catholic Church priests' sex scandal. The story shows that evil grows bigger in secret. All one has to do is look at what is happening within the Roman Catholic Church at the moment. Who would not now trade a public scandal in the 60's and 70's for the kind of scandal that is happening now in 2010. It would have been very painful when it happened, but the cover up and the denial that has lasted for years is going to make this scandal even more painful and costly in the pocketbook.

The Roman Catholic Church's scandal is strong evidence that evil gets worse, grows bigger, and smells a lot worse if it is kept in the dark. The more obvious and easier lesson is that good openness in public affairs help to prevent abuses and mistakes. Open bidding for contracts helps prevent sweetheart deals like those that were made in Iraq. Open public meetings help prevent decisions that are based on misinformation. Transparency helps to prevent problems from getting started.

Openness and transparency help to prevent evil and mistakes from growing larger and more difficult to handle. Of course, when you are the one on the committee or when it has been your error that is about to be made public, it is pretty hard to see the good in making it public. But I do remember one of those sayings, "When you make a mistake, acknowledge it quickly and openly, crow tastes better warm."

Abusing the Scripture

The more I listen to people talk about being Christian, and what is the Christian thing to do, and all about Christian values, the more I am convinced that there are a number of different ways to abuse the Scriptures. The first way that many people who are speaking publicly about being Christian abuse the scriptures are to never read them. Those are the Christians who claim we ought to follow Christian family values as defined in the Scriptures, but they do not say whether we ought to follow Abraham and his two wives and two concubines, David and Solomon with their many wives, Jesus who was single, and Paul who says he thinks it would really be better not to marry. There are the Christians like Glenn Beck who claims that Christians ought to avoid “social justice” and thereby given evidence of never having read the prophets, never having read Jesus, and never having read James where the constant focus is on caring for the widow, the poor, the stranger and the orphans. If you are going to claim to be a Bible believing Christian you ought,at least, to read the Bible.
The second way many Christians abuse the Bible is to read just the words. It is like pretending to know a song when all you have are the words. You do not get to feel the emotions of a song until you hear the music. If you look at a painting and all you see are colors, you miss the whole experience. You cannot get the power, the joy, the message of the Bible if are you have are the words on the page. You have to listen to the agony of the psalmist. You have to hear the courage of Jeremiah. You need to confront the anger of Paul when he denounces the hypocrites in Galatia. It is like reading satire without realizing it is satire. It is watching a sit com on TV. Without the sound. You have to listen to the whole story and catch the mood, the emotions, and the human interaction.
The third way to abuse the Scriptures is used by most of us. It is to only listen to the few passages we like. We have our only little set of verses that appeal to us and we seldom range outside those verses. This canon within the canon is a very common method of Scripture abuse among the liberal Christians. The work of taking the Scriptures seriously is really very hard work. We all ought to try it some time.

The Spill Over

In my retirement I have ventured into the world of female young volleyball. I have taken up the occupation of Volleyball official. It has been an interesting experience. I had no idea that there were this many people doing this kind of thing every Saturday for about three months. These volleyball sessions go all day Saturday. Most begin about 8:30 a.m. and the last is not over until 8:00 p.m.

A few Saturdays ago I was working a match in a "14 and under Nickel" competition. "14 and Under" means that every girl is 14 years old or younger. They have them divided into levels of skill by metals. Nickel, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum. Nickel means that these young girls are playing at a very elemental level. This is not Olympic volleyball. The set I was calling was very competitive. Most games go to 25. This game ended up with a 34-32 score. It was a very exciting set. When the score was about 28-28 the captain of one team came up and complained that the parents were saying some very "rude, crude and socially unacceptable things" to the girls while they were trying to serve. I assured her that I would listen for it and would act if I heard it. I did not hear anything and the match conclude.

As the teams switched sides and one of the coaches said something to me about it, the other coach simply said that their girls had been getting the same thing from the parents on their side. Later I was told more about what was being said to them, and I had to tell the girls that in the larger picture they were going to have to learn how to block out crowd noises and crowd insults as they play in other sports and other places.

Since this is my first year, I do not know if this is new or not for volleyball. I do know that over zealous parents have been a problem in most youth sports for as long as the youth programs have been organized by adults. But the things that were reported to me that were said made me think about the kind of things that were said in the public rallies against health care reform bill. These comments to these girls at this age were sexual, racial, vicious attacks on them. They had the same mean hostile spirit that the anti-health rallies had. One just has to wonder if there is some kind of carry over. Acceptance of that kind of yelling in public in one places makes it acceptable in another. I don't know in which direction the carry over would go.

These kind of comments coming from people who would probably call themselves good people is just another example of the basic Christian affirmation that there is evil in us all. That it slips out, erupts, shows up in all kinds of ways. In the way we can become a mean and nasty cheering section for our side and ready to hurt and demean others just for a moment of success. Try telling that 14 year old girl who is trying to learn how to serve in a very close game that the people who are yelling at her are basically good people. She probably would have no trouble believing that they too are sinners.

A bit of evidence

It has often been said that the great proof for the existence of God is the church. And it has not been said in a positive way. Those who know Church history; those who know Church politics; those who know Church theological debates; those who know the reality of the local congregations; say it because they believe that no organization like the church could have continued to exist except by the grace of God. Why would people put up with so much fighting, so many controversies, so many petty arguments and insults and personality conflicts? Something besides human power and gifts have to be at work, they claim, to keep an organization, an institution, a denomination, a political power as dysfunctional as the church survives.

While I have seen my share of evidence for the truth of all that has been said, my time in retirement in the visiting and preaching to some of these small and collapsing churches has driven this point home with even greater force. What and why does a rural church with five members, most of whom are members of the same family, continue to hold services? They hold joint services with another small church for the major religious events: Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and other special days, why don't they just close one door and worship with another congregation? The other congregation has a super musician and the one with five members has an elderly woman who only knows how to play about thirty hymns.

Another one I preached at began the service with four people in it. Two of them had parts in the service, each was scheduled to sing a solo. At this congregation the organist called at the last minute and announced that he would not be there. We had to sing without an help. One of the solos was by a senior woman who must have had a beautiful voice thirty years ago and she still thinks it is worthy. The other solo was by an El Salvador resident who sang in Spanish. I think there were seven people by the time we got to the passing of the peace by 11:40 a.m. But that was the remarkable thing. Somehow this little church with no pastor, about seven members on the roll has managed to provide Christian fellowship to an El Salvadorian community in the area and been a place of Christian love for these strangers. How they managed to do that I cannot imagine except that there was present some other power, spirit, grace that was at work in them that has no earth origin.

I have often quoted a short poem that I heard a radio evangelist give. "To live above with the saints in love, Ah, that will be glory. To live below with the saints I know, well, that is a different story." Another person once suggested that volunteer church work is hell on earth, and prepares you for heaven where indeed, you will spend eternity with people you did not like and did not know on earth. Certainly it is no hard proof of the existence of God, but it is a reality that it is hard to explain the survival of the local congregation and the world wide church without some kind of supernatural help.

Redemption

Somehow I got to be chairperson of an Administrative Commission of Presbytery to close and dispose of an old church. The deed of the property dates back to 1868. The church was a black Presbyterian church which meant that it was a church built by the Northern branch of the Presbyterian Church in the South right after the Civil War. Obviously the white Presbyterians in the South had not been very good about helping the black citizens establish their own churches. In fact all over North Carolina there are schools, hospitals, and churches for African Americans that were started by the Northern branch of the Presbyterian Church.

This church has been at that corner since l868, but its distinguished history did not translate into active members. It shrunk till it could not afford its own pastor. Then it had to make do with pulpit supply preaching and nobody to do the calling and caring that was necessary to build it up. So about March of 2008 the last few people just closed the doors and walked away. They all joined other churches in the area. One Sunday they just had services, had Communion and walked away. There are still empty communion cups in the pew racks.

So we have been trying to sell the building. It has not been an easy task. Part of the reason the few who had been members walked away was because the building was needing major roof repair and they did not have the money. It has been estimated that around $50,000 would be needed to repair the building if done by a contractor. So they just left and the rains came. The snows came. The water poured in. The mold, mildew, rot, sheet rock got soaked and has fallen off the walls. The insulation is all hanging through the ceiling. But we have found another black congregation and we have made them a very attractive offer and they are taking it. They have some members who know how to do things.

I was watching them walk around and examine the building. I started thinking about how much work they would have to do and how hard it will be. But then I started thinking that this kind of redemption has been a part of the black community for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, they have been forced to take the old cars and make them run. Finding junk air-conditioners and fans and fixing them has been their only way to have coolness in the summer. Getting the run down old shack and trying to make it livable has been required of them. It has always had to be part of their faith and confidence that something old, dirty, disgusting can be taken and redeemed. Certainly as a people they have had much more experience, I suspect, with the whole reality of restoration and redemption than many of us in the middle class.

Dr. King once remarked that the white church had a lot they could learn from black Christians. I think what is involved in this notion of redemption and renewal is one of those things.