Quotes and other wisdom on faith and doubt

Many people have asked for copies of various poems, prayers and other pieces of wisdom on faith and doubt that were featured in last Sunday’s worship service on Affirmation 10 (which affirms that doubt can be a productive part of faith).  All of these are reproduced below, along with a few extras that we couldn’t fit into the worship but are dynamite nonetheless.

Sorry about the non-uniform type size and spacing (some titles and spaces between lines are larger than others).  There was a technical issue importing these which I am not expert enough to solve!

Excerpt from “Moving Waters” by Rumi (from The Soul of Rumi)

When you do things

from your soul,  you feel

a river moving you

along.

When actions come from another

section, the feeling

disappears.    Don’t let

others lead you.  They

may be blind or, worse,

vultures.  Reach for the

rope

of God.

“Faith” by Ruth Gendler

Faith lives in the same apartment building as Doubt.  When Faith was out of town visiting her uncle in the hospital, Doubt fed the cat and watered the asparagus fern.  Faith is comfortable with Doubt because she grew up with him.  Their mothers are cousins.  Faith is not dogmatic about her beliefs like some of her relatives.  Her friends fear that Faith is a bit stupid.  They whisper that she is naïve and she depends on Doubt to protect her from the meanness of life.  In fact, it is the other way around.  It is Faith who protects Doubt from Cynicism.

“Faith”

by David Whyte

I want to write about faith,

about the way the moon rises

over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,

slowly becoming that last curving and impossible

sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself

I refuse it the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,

like a new moon, slender and barely open,

be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

Excerpt from “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith” by Ann Lamott (originally appeared in 2003 article on Advent at Salon.com)

The thing is, I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something my Jesuit friend Tom told me — that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, and emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. Faith also means reaching deeply within for the sense one was born with, the sense to go for a walk.

Prayer of Thomas Merton

“My Lord, God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead

of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know

myself, and the fact that I think that I am following Your will does not mean

that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please You

does in fact please You.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am

doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I

know that if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I know

nothing about it.  Therefore, I will trust You always though I may seem to be

lost in the shadow of death.  I will not fear for You are ever with me, and

Various Quotes on Faith and Doubt

With great doubts come great understanding; with little doubts come little understanding. – Chinese Proverb

Only the one who knows nothing doubts nothing. – French proverb

One must know when it is right to doubt, to affirm, to submit. Anyone who does otherwise does not understand the force of reason. – Blaise Pascal

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. – Francis Bacon

Knowledge and doubt are inseparable to man. The sole alternative to ”knowledge-with-doubt” is no knowledge at all. Only God and certain madmen have no doubts! – Martin Luther

There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds. – Alfred Lord Tennyson

Doubt can be a tool in God’s hand wielded, in the lives of those who allow it, for the strengthening, not the destruction of faith. – George MacDonald

If ours is an examined faith, we should be unafraid to doubt. If doubt is eventually justified, we were believing what clearly was not worth believing. But if doubt is answered, our faith has grown stronger. It knows God more certainly and it can enjoy God more deeply. – C. S. Lewis

Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true.: Buddha – Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta

Faith isn’t believing without proof – it’s trusting without reservation. William Sloane Coffin

It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.– Fyodor Dostoyevski

The problem with the wise is they are so filled with doubts while the dull are so certain.– Bertrand Russell

Christianity is not a message which has to be believed, but an experience of faith that becomes a message. –Edward Schillebeeckx

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery. – Annie Dillard

Other Relevant Quotes

You will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

“Jesus came to take away your sins – not your mind.” - Church Ad Project

“Faith is believing in stuff you know ain’t true.” - Mark Twain (paraphrased)

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has noted, confronting God ”…requires not only deep faith but new faith.  It takes not only nerve but a fresh hunch about this God.  The hunch is that this God does not want to be an unchallenged structure but one who can be frontally addressed” [From The Message of the Psalms (Augsburg, 1984)].

Don’t tell God how big your storm is, tell the storm how big your God is. – unknown

A sad loss

My apologies to regular readers who may be confused by the sudden appearance of another blogger and mentions of a transfer of CrossWalk America posts.  This “other blogger” is my friend, Merrill Davison, who you will recognize from the Asphalt Jesus book as one of the core walkers on CrossWalk America’s 2006 walk across America.

Unfortunately, there will be no transfer of 2006-2009 CrossWalk America blog entries (besides Merrill’s 2009 posts), though I was very much hoping there would be.  Here’s the background for those who are interested:  In 2008, CWA merged with The Center for Progressive Christianity (TCPC).  Since then, TCPC has been maintaining CWA’s old web pages/blog, but this is coming to an end as it doesn’t mesh with their system and integration would be cost prohibitive.  Thus, I received notice that the CWA blog, which contains hundreds of entries from the entire walk team and several others, from before, during, and after the walk, was going to be taken down.  I hated to see this happen, as it would mean the loss of a distinctive resource and historical record.  Most importantly (to me, anyway), the blog contains hundreds of posts made by other people besides myself and our documentary film maker Scott Griessel.  Since Scott and I respectively have a film and a book that tells the story of the walk in our voices, it didn’t really concern me terribly that our particular blog posts would no longer be available to the public, though there is much written in them that never made it into the book or film.  What really concerned me (and continues to do so) is losing the other people’s posts.  These are voices of the other walkers and special people associated with CrossWalk America that aren’t contained in any other public source.  Thus, I asked if there was a chance that I could transfer the CWA blog onto my Asphalt Jesus blog.

Up until a few days ago, the word was “Yes, as long as you pay the $200 estimated fee for transferring the material.”  I was more than happy to pay this and was very excited about adding these posts as an archive here for the future. However, once the web developers started looking into the matter more closely, they realized that the CWA blog uses such an outdated web platform that no simple transfer exists.  They were going to have to hand cut-and-paste hundreds upon hundreds of entries, and hand-create folders in which to place them … a very expensive process.

Thus, just today we had to pull the plug on the project.  :-(  Before the plug was pulled, however, they’d already cut-and-pasted around 50 of Merrill Davison’s blog posts, which is why you find them here.

Sorry for any confusion this created.  I wish we could have that archive, but I guess sometimes things are just meant to fade over time.

Lydia Ruffin’s music

Lydia Ruffin’s “Art and Soul Cafe” is highlighted in Ch. 10 of Asphalt Jesus, dealing with Affirmation 4 and reclaiming the arts in worship.  Lydia is an excellent guitarist/vocalist, incidentally.  If you’d like to hear some of her music or order her latest CD, you can find her at http://profile.myspace.com/lydiaruffin.

Dr. Elnes appears on The God Complex radio show

This morning I had the privilege of speaking with two Christian leaders I value highly, Bruce Reyes-Chow and Carol Howard Merritt, who host The God Complex radio show.  The God Complex is an internet radio show engineered by another leader I respect highly, Landon Wittsitt.

I thought the interview was going to be recorded for airing at a later date, and thus was waiting until I got that date before alerting you to it.  But the show was actually LIVE this morning!  I think most listeners probably listen later, via podcast or by clicking the audio link on the site, anyway.

We spoke mostly about the state of progressive Christianity, my books, the Phoenix Affirmations, and how the Phoenix Affirmations provide a lens for interpreting and responding to contemporary issues.  It was great fun to be “with” them and an honor to be invited.  You may listen, if you like, by clicking general The God Complex link above or go directly to it by clicking here. [UPDATE 8/25/09: The audio quality on this is pretty sketchy.  They were having technical difficulties for much of the interview, but I thought it was going to sound better than it does.]

On their site you may also find other interviews with people you may want to hear from more than me, like Barbara Brown-Taylor, Diana Butler-Bass and Phyllis Tickle.

Bass, with Ripples

Affirmation 4 of the Phoenix Affirmations affirms that worship needs to be as vibrant, sincere, and artful as it is scriptural.   What gave rise originally to this Affirmation – as well as several aspects of Countryside’s worship that you may consider to be “new and different” since I’ve been on the scene – was an experience I had in 1999 at our lakeside cabin in Bandon, Oregon (Are you beginning to sense that Bandon is a very special place for my family?).  I write about that experience in the introductory chapter of my book Igniting Worship: The Seven Deadly Sins (Abingdon Press, 2004).  I don’t think Abingdon Press will mind if I cut and paste that introduction here.  As you read it, bear in mind that this was written from a particular context which is not Countryside, and reflects experiences I had there, some of which translate directly to Countryside’s context and some of which do not (For instance, I don’t find many people at Countryside sitting blankly, looking bored out of their minds in worship at either service).  I also no longer feel comfortable referring  to myself as a “liberal” minister, and more often than not use the word “progressive” (not that I’m entirely comfortable with that, either.  Basically, I’m just plain uncomfortable with any labels).  Anyway, reading what’s below may help you understand why we do some of the things we do in worship, both at 9 and 11 am.

Bass, with Ripples

Why are people totally bored in church? Why do they sit there staring blankly, looking like they’re just waiting to be released from bondage? There doesn’t seem to be any connection between worship and everyday life.

Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m a minister—a mainline, liberal, Protestant minister of the United Church of Christ, in Scottsdale, Arizona. I’m also a renegade. In the summer of 1999, I and a handful of others were trying to start a revolution. We felt worship had drifted away from its moorings and become too tame, too pre-packaged. We wanted to start with a blank sheet of paper, so we asked, “What is worship?” We then began the task of refashioning it according to that vision, endeavoring to create worship for the Twenty-First century.

While on study-leave that summer, I found myself sitting at the edge of a weathered dock on a small lake on the southern Oregon Coast. I’d been staring at the surface for a long time, not knowing why I was looking at anything at all, given my normal routine of meditating with eyes shut. I guess I had been inspired by the book I’d been reading, Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, an incredible exposition of God’s mysterious hand in Nature. Dillard’s words turned my soul’s gaze from the heavens toward the earth, where it was asking, “What is the basis of worship?”

As I gazed into the water, I suddenly sensed motion at the periphery of my vision: the largest bass I have ever seen! It was so big that, though it was swimming next to the sand three feet below the surface, it was causing ripples on top. It shot right past me and I gasped.

Now, I’m not claiming that God spoke to me in the bass. But, in the moment after I gasped, “a plum” seemed to “drop from heaven,” as the Buddhists say.

“This is the foundation of worship. If you can take that hour or so you have on Sunday morning and open people to experiencing just a quarter second of the awe and wonder you just experienced, it is accomplished. You can pack up and go home. You have an hour or so for a quarter second.”

Something felt intuitively right about this insight, like I’d lived my entire life and entered the ministry just to “hear” it and do something with it. Yet I wondered, “How does one organize an entire worship service around an experience of the Divine, whether the experience lasts a quarter second or an hour? It’s not like one can simply say, ‘Okay, now we’re all going to have a God experience.’”

At the end of my study-leave, I returned to my church, Scottsdale Congregational United Church of Christ (SCUCC), where we explored the experience and the questions surrounding it from many different angles. Together we realized that, although we can’t create or manufacture an experience of God in worship (and wouldn’t want to if we could), we can create a context of openness to God’s Spirit at work in our midst. A rock-solid theological premise at SCUCC is that the Spirit of the Living Christ (the Holy Spirit) is really present in worship. Not only is the Spirit present, but it is waiting for us to open even the smallest crack in our hearts so that it may enter within us, stirring the deepest waters of our souls. Thus, we concluded, our job as worship leaders is to organize worship in such a way that it’s kind of like sitting at the edge of that weathered Oregon dock: You can’t predict when, or even if, a bass is going to swim by, but you can set yourself up to be awake and attentive, with eyes wide open, so if it does swim by you don’t miss it.

We started a second service based on this premise and called it The Studio, which is built on an experience-based platform. The Studio is a multi-sensory worship service drawing upon a wide variety of artistic resources, including music, painting, poetry, dance, drama, sculpture, multimedia, film, literature, as well as other “sacred” and “secular” elements, both ancient and modern. The aim is not so much to teach people about God as to open us all to experiencing God in a way that resonates with, and transforms, our everyday lives.

The experiential platform of The Studio makes it different from most “traditional” and even “contemporary” services in the United States today, which are commonly built on a message-based platform. By comparison, most services present a relatively fixed liturgy in which the sermon stands at the apex.

At The Studio, the liturgy changes each week and is organized around the kind of experience to which we are trying to open people. Thus, if the theme is “God as Creator,” the worship team does not ask, “How can we teach people about how God is Creator,” but asks instead, “How can we help open people to experiencing the Creator God during the time we have together, or at least model what an experience of the Creator might be like?” We understand that the resources of the entire world are at our disposal for doing this.

Furthermore, preaching takes a different form at The Studio. Instead of a pastor standing up and delivering a sermon for twenty minutes or so at a fixed point in the service, the pastor acts more as an interpretive guide throughout the service, reflecting briefly at various points on what has just happened to us, or providing an intellectual bridge between elements. Strong use is made of laypeople as well, who provide reflections (often in dialog with a pastor) and prepare or lead the congregation through various segments. Laypeople also play a critical role in helping plan The Studio.

Since The Studio was introduced in September 2000, our church has changed in wonderful ways we could scarcely have imagined. I can hardly wait to get to church on Sunday morning! Worship has become an expression of our entire community. Lives are being transformed on broader and deeper levels. Many people who had “given up” and left whatever church they were attending long ago have made their way to The Studio, are becoming breathtaking disciples of Christ.[1] Even our “traditional” service has been enhanced through worship insights gleaned from The Studio. Most importantly, we have found that by bringing elements from everyday life into worship, we begin taking worship with us into our everyday lives. All of life has become worship, just as worship has become all of life.

---

[1] Worship attendance has nearly doubled in the last four years, with approximately 80% of those new to us being from the “unchurched” population.

Common Myths About Inclusive Churches

When churches declare themselves to be inclusive of all people, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) people, a number of things commonly happen that people don’t necessarily expect.  Let me deconstruct three myths.  For simplicity’s sake, I’ll use the term “open and affirming” (O&A) to describe any church that has made a public declaration of inclusiveness, regardless of the actual language used (Depending on the denomination, some churches use “Reconciling,” “More Light,” etc.)

Myth #1:  LGBT people will flood the church.

Fact:  While some churches who declare themselves O&A do so in hopes of realizing strong membership gains from the LGBT community, O&A churches do not tend to experience many, or any, additional LGBT members very quickly.  While, years ago, stories circulated about certain churches who were flooded by the LGBT community after declaring themselves O&A, these churches were quite far from the norm.  Most churches’ experience has been more like Countryside’s.  Several years ago, Countryside adopted a mission statement publicly declaring itself to be “an inclusive family of faith, welcoming all to our table of love and acceptance.”  The phrase “an inclusive family of faith” has regularly been included in our advertising to the community and been displayed on our banner facing Pacific Street.  Yet Countryside has experienced no discernible growth from the LBBT community since the adoption of our mission statement.  While some may assume that we would experience more growth if we used the words “Open and Affirming” in our mission and advertising, this is not the experience of most churches who adopt this term.

When my former congregation in Scottsdale declared itself to be formally “Open and Affirming” twelve years ago (becoming the first UCC church in Arizona to do this), for instance, we went for two or three years before welcoming our first new gay member – this, despite the fact that we were actively promoting our “O&A” status in community publications and held a series of special prayer services for those with AIDS which were advertised in area HIV clinics.

Given their long history of exclusion from full participation in faith communities, many LGBT people have either drifted away from Christian faith or have become skeptical about how fully they actually would be welcomed even among churches that declare themselves O&A.  So they tend to shy away.  The fact of the matter is that a church normally has to work very hard, intentionally reaching out to the LGBT over a number of years, before they realize discernible growth from the LGBT community.  When I left Scottsdale, after we had been publicly and assertively O&A for a full eleven years, the percentage of LGBT members in the congregation had definitely risen, but to approximately 15%.  That’s significant, but hardly “flooded.”

Myth #2: Membership will decline due to conflict over O&A status.

Fact:  A few years ago, the UCC published a study showing that O&A churches in our denomination were more likely to grow, and also to realize giving increases, than non-O&A churches.  While a recent study of O&A churches in a couple of other mainline denominations has shown no significant increase in growth among O&A churches, it was also shown that O&A churches were no more likely to decline than non-O&A ones.

Curiously, during the years I was in Scottsdale, we experienced a significant increase in membership growth from “straight” people after declaring ourselves O&A.  While other factors contributed to membership gains besides O&A, we were intrigued by the fact that approximately 9 in every 10 new “straight” members cited our O&A status as being a contributing factor to their attraction.

Myth #3: People’s attitudes about whether or not to accept LGBT people are fixed and can’t be expected to change.

Fact:  Have YOU always affirmed and accepted LGBT people?  Personally, as I mentioned in last Sunday’s sermon, I have not.  And, like Bishop Spong, I have always figured that if I could change, the Church could change.   Happily, this assumption has proved itself to be correct over and over.  In the 15 months since I arrived at Countryside, quite a few people have told me that their views on LGBT people have changed in recent years.  I witnessed the same phenomenon in Scottsdale.  This shouldn’t be surprising.  The same thing happened with respect to welcoming Gentiles into full Christian fellowship in the early church.  Had not quite a number of staunch rejectors of Gentiles not experienced a change of mind and heart, most of us would not be Christian today.  It’s still hard to believe, isn’t it, that the largest, most controversial issue facing the Christian church in the first century was whether or not to let people like you and me in?

While there are certainly some pockets of resistance among churches with respect to the O&A issue, this trend toward greater inclusiveness may be expected not only to continue, but to accelerate.  While a handful of years ago, there were just 200 churches in the UCC that listed themselves formally as “Open and Affirming,” now there are over 700 and the number is still rising rapidly.  A couple of weeks ago, the Episcopal Church in the U.S. boldly declared that it would not only lift the 3-year-old moratorium on ordaining openly gay bishops that the worldwide fellowship of Anglican Churches had asked it to sustain, but that it would begin development of marriage liturgies for gays (Click here for a NY Times article on this).

The fact of the matter is that when people discover that “the sky does not fall” after churches begin welcoming LGBT people, or states begin allowing LGBT people to marry, then many of those who had been taught that the sky would, in fact, proverbially fall begin to reexamine their assumptions.

Most people don’t want to condemn others or deny them basic rights.  They only do so out of fear.  Once it can be shown decisively that their fears are unfounded, many people who have condemned or been wary of LGBT people experience profound relief. (They may also experience anger or resentment toward those responsible for instilling their fear to begin with.)  The more joyfully churches and other social and cultural institutions welcome LGBT people, the more relief is experienced by good-hearted people who had once been afraid of everything coming apart at the seams.  And the more that this relief is sustained by continuing life experience, the more former detractors start becoming advocates.

In his poem, “The Old Interior Angel,” David Whyte describes an experience of being confronted by a scary-looking bridge to be crossed in the Himalayas.  This poem, I think, describes far more than bridge crossings.  To me, his poem describes wonderfully well the important role played by individuals – and institutions – who joyfully go where others have been afraid to go, creating a change of heart in those who had been paralyzed by fear.  I think it serves as a fitting end this post.

The Old Interior Angel”

by David Whyte (from Fire in the Earth [Many Rivers Press, 1992]; reprinted in River Flow: New and Selected Poems 1984-2007 [Many Rivers Press, 2007]

Young, male and

immortal as I was,

I stopped at the first sight

of that broken bridge.

The taut cables snapped

and the bridge planks

concertina-ed

into a crazy jumble

over the drop,

four hundred feet

to the craggy

stream.

I sat and watched

the wind shiver

on the broken planks,

as if by looking hard

and long enough

the life-line

might spontaneously

repair itself

-but watched in vain.

An hour I sat

in the clear silence,

checking each

involuntary movement

of the body toward

that trembling

bridge

with a fearful mind,

and an emphatic

shake of the head.

Finally, facing defeat

and about to go back

the way I came

to meet the others.

Three days round

by another pass.

Enter the old mountain woman

with her stooped gait,

her dark clothes

and her dung basket

clasped to her back.

Small feet shuffling

for the precious gold-brown

fuel for cooking food.

Intent on the ground

she glimpsed my feet

and looking up

Said “Namaste”

“I greet the God in you”

the last syllable

held like a song.

I inclined my head

and clasped my hands

to reply, but

before I could look up

she turned her lined face

and went straight across

that shivering chaos

of wood

and broken steel

in one movement.

Meet Guest Blogger, Margaret McGrath, on “Engaging people authentically …”

I’ve invited novelist and recent Countryside member, Margaret McGrath, to share a reflection from time to time on one of the twelve Phoenix Affirmations. She graciously took me up on the offer.  Here’s her reflection on Affirmation 5, which claims that “Christian love of neighbor includes engaging people authentically, as Jesus did, treating all as creations made in God’s very image, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental ability, nationality, or economic class.”

When Eric asked me to write something for the Asphalt Jesus blog about Affirmation Five, I wasn’t sure I’d have anything to say. I am all about equal rights regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability, socio-economic class so Affirmation Five seems like a slam-dunk to a left-wing tree-hugging liberal like me. I’ve marched on Washington. I’ve signed petitions, donated time, talents, treasure to any number of social justice causes. I can check Affirmation Five off my list…right?

During prayer and reflection, however, the phrase “engaging people authentically” kept bobbing to the surface of my mind. If I dig a little deeper into my politically correct beliefs, I’m not convinced I follow the affirmation to its most powerful conclusion. I’m not convinced I engage people authentically.

To me, engaging people authentically means seeing them as more than a member of a “protected class”. It means moving beyond such automatic categorizations as gay/straight/transgendered, white/Asian/black, male/female, Muslim/Christian/Buddhist/Jew, poor/rich – to seeing that person as an individual. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that engaging people authentically begins and ends with seeing them as no more and no less than a child of God.

This is not easy to do when someone espouses political beliefs diametrically opposed to yours or worse, cuts you off in traffic, when your spouse forgets a crucial appointment or your child demands your attention after a long, tiring day. Sometimes the people I engage least authentically are those closest to me, with whom familiarity has bred a certain frustration, if not contempt. But I believe Jesus saw the people in his world not as Roman/Israelite, Samaritan/Essene, male/female, Jew/Gentile but as kernels of God-ness encased in human bodies. I’m slowly learning to do the same.

In the Buddhist tradition people greet each other with hands in prayer position. They give a slight bow and say, “Namaste” which means, “I bow to the divinity within you that is also within me.” In other words, encounters begin by honoring the God-spark within. Now that’s some seriously authentic engagement…or at least a good foundation for it!

In an effort to more fully live Affirmation Five, I’m working on listening with my heart and soul as well as my ears, striving to hear God’s voice speaking through another person. I also try to slow down, to give more than a millisecond of attention to a cashier, a barista, someone who greets me at coffee hour on Sunday…not to mention my family. What are some ways you engage people authentically in your daily life?

Let Evening Come

In response to last Sunday’s service, in which the implications of the Hebrew notion of day beginning with night were explored, a Countrysider sent me the following poem, which fits the theme well.

“Let Evening Come” by Jane Kenyon (from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems)

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yearn.  Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass.  Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down.  Let the shed
go black inside.  Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid.  God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

Who is Jesus for me?

One of the groups studying Asphalt Jesus asked the following question: “Would love your response to the first discussion question for chapter 7, “Who is Jesus for you?” We’re curious about the part of the question that asks us to think about whether we respond to the Jesus of history or the Christ of present experience….and the suggestion that we consider both perspectives. Can you share your thoughts?”

Like the Rev. Jene Miller in Arnett, Oklahoma (from Ch. 7 of Asphalt Jesus), the question to me is not “Is Jesus God?” but “Is God like Jesus?”  To me, the answer is, “Amen, yes!”  Everything else one has to say about Jesus or any other aspect of Christian theology is small potatoes next to this affirmation.  But I’m happy to put some meat (or at least sour cream and chives) on this big potato.

Let’s start with the most basic:

Jesus is a person of history.  His history not only includes his own life on earth, but he has become a part of the lives of a great many people – those who lived in his day and those who would come after.  He is a part of my history.   His story is embedded in mine.  He is not simply a person of the ancient past, therefore, but of the present.  My present.  If the word “Christ” refers to an aspect of Jesus that continues to live on beyond his mortal death, I can wholeheartedly affirm that Jesus is Christ even on this most basic of levels, for his story has become central in my story.

Why has Jesus become central?  Because I meet God in Jesus.  I’ve had both personal and communal experiences that suggest (and sometimes even insist) that there really is a God, a God who is actually aware of you and me, and who interacts internally with us, spirit to spirit, loving us beyond our wildest imagination.  These experiences “look like” the Jesus I regularly encounter in the gospels.  This fact has led me to conclude that Jesus is one who was “full of God.”  Or in the apostle Paul’s words, “God was in Christ.”

Based on this conclusion, I have also been able to work the flow the other way.  That is, I not only can find the tenor and tone of my God-experiences in the Jesus of scripture, but I can count on this same Jesus to regularly steer me in the direction of future God-experiences where I have not expected to find them.  For instance, the Jesus of scripture, who hangs out with the tax collectors, prostitutes, and “sinners,” including “sinners” known as scribes and Pharisees, regularly leads me into experiencing God in and through people I might ordinarily have written off.  In this respect, I meet my neighbor through Jesus - that part of my neighbor that bears God’s mark even amidst all the other marks that may be upon them.  I hear God whispering in the struggles of drug addicts and derelicts, of adulterers and anarchists.  I also can find God whispering at times in the angry voices of legalistic fundamentalists (And I can use Jesus’ voice to help me discern when the “word of the Lord” is not to be found in these voices as well!).  To allude to our weekly blessing at the conclusion of worship, in Jesus, God has often pushed me into places I would not necessarily go myself.  So I pay attention to Jesus.  Close attention.

Another reason I pay attention is because Jesus exhibits a generosity of spirit that leads me out of my stinginess; a graciousness that moves me beyond my judgmentalism; a depth and breadth of creative engagement with life that takes hold of me and pulls me beyond rigidity and narrowness; a courageousness that raises me from timidity; a humility that takes the hot air out of my pride.  These qualities and many more have led me to conclude that I meet myself Jesus – my truest self. It’s the part of me that seeks to move beyond my Pinocchio woodenness and know what flesh-and-blood existence is really meant to be.  Jesus helps me become more fully human even as he points me to the divine.

So, is this person in whom I regularly meet my God, my neighbor, and myself, “the Jesus of history” or “the Christ of faith”?  My answer, of course, is “yes” regardless of what is essential nature may be (i.e., his essence – whether fully God, fully human, or both).  What I’ve stated above is equally true whether Jesus was a mortal human like you and me or the second member of the Trinity who existed before the beginning of all things and will be forevermore.

During Countryside’s “Theology on Tap” sessions this past year, I have have been asked, in a number of different ways, not simply what I believe about Jesus but what any Christian “should” believe about Jesus.  I have stated that it really doesn’t matter to me what someone believes about Jesus with respect to whether he was mortal, divine, or both.  What I care about is finding folks who seek a fuller understanding and experience of God, neighbor, and self, in and through Jesus regardless of the conclusions they draw with respect to his nature, and even regardless of how comfortable they feel with the label “Christian.”  If they’re willing to throw their hat in with Jesus on this level, they’re worth banding together with to form a community of spirit and faith.

Fourth of July and Affirmation 11

Tomorrow in church one of my reflections on Affirmation 11 of the Phoenix Affirmations will be based on this blog post.  I’m also going to show this video to illustrate another reflection.  So if you’re reading this before Sunday, be forewarned!

A Fourth of July Remembrance

I grew up on Mercer Island, near Seattle, in the middle of Lake Washington.  Each year on the Fourth of July, I looked forward to a particular family tradition, which was to pack a picnic dinner and head to the back yard of the Mercer Island Presbyterian Church.  We weren’t members, but the church had the advantage of being perched atop a hill that overlooked the downtown fireworks display, so lots of the Island community would gather there.

The fireworks wouldn’t get going until around ten in the evening, and if you wanted to get a good spot, you had to get there early – hence the picnic dinner.  We’d spread out a big, pink blanket that embarrassed the heck out of me.  Then my parents and whatever of their friends happened to show up would sit down and enjoy a glass of wine or soda while my brother and I ran off to the playground looking for our friends.

We could usually count on a handful or so to show up.  God help us on years they didn’t.  Hanging out with just adults was NO FUN!  But when friends came, we would play Frisbee or tag.  We also would wind each other tight on the swings, spinning around at what seemed like a million miles an hour, then jumping off fast and try to run without falling on our faces.  We’d look for garter snakes to terrorize in the grass at the edge of the playground.  We’d play in the sand box – at least until the year we found cat feces buried in it. And as we grew older, we’d “casually” eye the girls.

At some point, a parent would call us for dinner.  Usually we were so wrapped up in play that one of us would yell “Okay!” and then we’d get right back to our games until a parent would come stomping up to the playground to march us back to the blanket.

According to the book of Deuteronomy, the ancient Hebrews, like us, celebrated their origins as a people each year.  They were commanded – by God they believed – to bring to the party copious amounts of food and drink, including wine and beer.  The goal, according to Deuteronomy, was to “feast in the Presence of God, your God, and have a good time.” (Deut 26:26).

There wasn’t a grill in the church’s back yard, so often our fare was fried chicken, potato salad, deviled eggs, pitted black olives, celery sticks lined with Velveeta “cheese,” watermelon, and Hershey’s chocolate bars.  It may not have been the feast of the ancient Hebrews, but there was something about eating outside on the grass under the heavens, with friends around and excitement in the air, that made the food taste like a royal banquet.  I always liked to grab a handful of the olives, insert one on the tip of each finger, and eat them one by one like Caesar being fed grapes by an attendant.  I’d try to eat them slowly, but usually they’d be gone in a matter of moments and I’d have to reload a couple of times.  If my parents caught me reloading, they’d get after me, so I’d have to exercise greater degrees of stealth as the evening wore on.

Eventually, the meal would end and we’d have a half hour or so to let it all settle before the fireworks began. Actually seeing fireworks was considered somewhat of a lucky thing for us residents of the rain-soaked Pacific Northwest.  We rarely knew whether or not we’d be seeing fireworks for sure until late in the day, if not just before they began – like this year in Omaha.  When the weather cooperated, there would always be a healthy measure of gratitude (and relief) mixed in with the spectacle.  You could almost hear people around you thinking, “We are so fortunate this year …”

Once I remember one of the nearby parents (thank goodness no one we knew)  singing “America the Beautiful” to his little girl as the fireworks began.  He was totally singing the wrong words and had no idea.  My brother and I tried not to blow Coca Cola through our noses as we struggled to suppress our laughter.

Another year, I remember asking someone why there were fireworks on the Fourth of July to begin with.  I was told that they were made to imitate explosions from bombs and missiles on a battlefield.  I thought it rather strange that something so beautiful and awe-inspiring could find its origin in death and destruction.  Little did I know that I would, in later years, find this same commingling of wonder and death in the central symbol of Christian faith.

Although we gathered on the grounds of a church, focusing our gaze on joy bursting in the heavens, I do not remember being particularly cognizant of being “in the Presence of God” as the ancient Hebrews understood it.  I just remember being in the company of family and good friends, playing outside, laughing until we were out of breath, and feeling as satiated by gratitude and joy as I was by chicken and chocolate.

Is it possible to experience God’s presence without being aware of that presence?  The only thing I can say for sure is that those July 4th celebrations of my youth were experiences I’d want to be a part of if I were God.