Join me on the “Joy Luke Club” Blog

Hey folks,

I am now blogging at a new site at www.JoyLukeClub.org from until Easter 2010.   The Asphalt Jesus will be dormant until then.  Thanks for following the conversation!

Grace and peace,

Eric

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.

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[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.

Dewitt Jones

In anticipation of interest in Dewitt Jones, who was a freelance photographer for National Geographic Magazine, stemming from tomorrow’s worship service, here’s a link for more information.

Final English Lakes Post

It’s 1:30 am our time.  We just finished a dinner that started at 11 pm.  It started a bit late because we  went an early evening, leisurely, celebratory hike above Ullswater Lake, along whose shore we’d started our hiking journey a week ago. Click here if you’d like to see the video.  It may be my favorite video, simply because of all the faces that are now dear to me at the front of it.  It has been a memorable journey – one that fulfilled my best expectations of a true study leave.  Now, I’m ready to return home to family and Countryside friends refreshed (after I get a good sleep on the plane!) and with renewed energy and vision.

Grace in the Tarn

Here’s a reflection I wrote after yesterday’s walk to Easedale Tarn – my attempt to put a concept like “grace” into common language.  Warning: I reserve the right to use this or a version of it as a sermon illustration sometime in the unforeseen future!  For definition’s sake, tarn is a small mountain lake often formed by glaciers.  And a gill is a British term for a small stream formed by a ravine.  In the case below, gill refers specifically to a stream with a waterfall and a little pool below it.  Okay, so I’m still having to define the terms, but at least they’re geographical rather than theological …  After reading what’s below, you may choose to see video of the hike by clicking here (Warning: It has a racy ending.  So I chose the “rock n’ roll” music from my selection of five loopable songs!).

Cresting the brow of the Easedale Tarn above Grasmere, the greater part of my companions prepared themselves for further ascent to places I knew would remain unknown to me.  I had swallowed my pride and made the difficult decision to stay behind, my knees still protesting the arduous ups and downs of the preceding day.

As the others moved off, I found the waters of the tarn too tempting to be left unpenetrated by my body.  Their depths seemed to be held in place by two knobby hands cupped and held tightly together as a wanderer in the Lake District might cup her hands to receive a drink from a craggy stream, pausing to admire the water’s clarity and coolness before quenching her thirst.

The mountain’s rocky fingers pointed themselves like sentinels standing watch before and above us; its grassy palms gently but fully embraced us from behind.  All these held the wind at bay allowing the waters to repose in utter stillness, calling the sky down rest upon its surface.

“Those waters’ll be a lot colder than the gill below,” someone warned.  Staying comfortable did not interest me.  I needed to accept an unspoken invitation.  Interloper though I was, the perfection before me did not seem wary of company.

Stripping down as far as modesty would allow, I gingerly stepped forward, trying neither to cut my feet on the sharp-toothed granite keeping the timid away, nor slip on the algae-covered larger stones sitting beneath the surface to thwart the overly eager.

At the first opportunity, I lurched forward into the swallow water, hoping to plunge my kangaroo pouch of a belly beneath the surface, as if my comrades had not already noticed it in the course of our last swim.

“How’s the water?” one of them called.  “Not much colder than the gill, actually,” I hastily answered.

As the greater part of the group made its way along the sloped shore toward the opposite end of the tarn, I inched out toward its center, cognizant of how poor my strokes must appear to onlookers.  My butterfly was an inchworm.  My crawl, a stumble.

Soon, my skin began voicing complaints to the increasing chill of the water.  “Guess I spoke to soon,” I told myself as those remaining behind prepared themselves for a swim.

Seeking warmth and tired of my awkwardness in the water, I stopped, treaded momentarily, then tilted my head back and thrust my chest forward until the length of my body rose to the tarn’s warmer surface.

“Ah, that extra bit of belly is good for something,” I consoled myself as I effortlessly floated like one of the clouds on the tarn’s still surface without increasing or deepening my breathing in any way.

As the late afternoon sun bathed and dried my face, neck, chest and toes, some imperceptible breeze slowly turned me until my feet pointed like a compass straight toward the palms of the hills.  My gaze shifted from the wispy clouds and surrounding blueness, to the green, rock-speckled slopes rising from water’s edge. For a moment, my protruding toes seemed to merge perfectly with the rocks on the lower hills.

My body thus united with mountain, water, and sky, I could almost hear a quiet voice whisper, “You have a place in this world; a place where everything comes together in your body and you disappear into a seamless whole.  Get over your clumsiness, and your fat little belly, and inhabit this place with your fullest self.”

A few minutes later, the breeze picked up, breaking my concentration and the water’s stillness, coaxing me to make my awkward way toward shore.  As I rose from the waters of the tarn, full-bellied, stepping gingerly again to avoid both the sharp and the slippery rocks guarding the edge, I lost hold of the peace I had just experienced.  I lost it until a quiet certainty arose from within that this peace I’d lost hold of had not lost hold of me.

English Lakes 2

Note: The entry below was written last Friday but I had trouble posting it until now.  The update is that we just figured out how to access wireless internet at Melmerby Hall Manor where we’re staying, so I expect to be able to write and post again shortly – including video.

We have not had internet access thus far at Melmerby Hall Manor, where we’re staying (though the website advertized it) so I don’t know how regularly I’ll be able to post news.  I found an internet cafe next to the lake we’re going to be walking beside this afternoon, so I thought I’d at least post a quick update.  Only have a couple minutes, though!

Had a wonderful session with David Whyte this morning. I began to realize one of the central attractions I have to him.  In nearly every circumstance where he uses the term “the world” (which he uses frequently), he uses it in the same way I would use the term “God” or “Spirit.” So reading or listening to him feels like having a deep, lively theological discussion without ever mentioning God directly.  What I like about his terminology is that it allows him to speak of a deeply incarnational sense about God.  That is, by calling God “the world” and using “the world” in the particular way David does, it holds together a whole string of intrinsic implications that are not necessarily implied by the word “God” even though they may very much be meant by the speaker (e.g. me … or you).  It’s like saying “the God of my experience, who is mystically and organically involved with humanity and nature, who has words to speak that are both universal and distinctive to you as an indidual, who loves you with a love that is great enough not to judge you and fierce enough not to let you pass thru life so easily without leaving your paricular mark it (and it’s mark in you), who is revealed in your own interiority, and in community with others, and in the earth, and in your vocational path, and in words you overhear yourself speaking from which you cannot retreat …” That’s essentially what I hear when I hear David speak of ”the world.” And by using that term he can reach people who have little or no concept of God and those who have a highly developed sense. I like that.  It gives me much to think about with respect to how I speak (and write) of the Divine.

In terms if out physical setting, I’m already plotting ways you to get back here.  I already feel that deep of a connection with it.

Incidentally, David’s son is here.  His name is Brendan, age 24, and seems a lot like what David would have been like at a similar age.  He actually looks a lot like a childhood friend of mine when he was in his young 20s.

The group is predictably made up of interesting people from all over the US (and one from the UK who lives in Montanegro).  At first they struck me as not so interesting and overly quiet, but then realized that they are all basically thinkers and are comfortable with sizeable periods of silence (an in fact expect it).  Have discovered they know too how to laugh and have a good time.  And a number of them enjoy tipping a pint of locally made beer at the end of the evening at the local pub – not that I would ever do anything like that …

Got to run or I’ll miss the steamer across the lake!

English Lakes Post #1

I’m in the Omaha airport currently, about to take off for the English Lakes District northern England for some much-anticipated study-leave.  A dozen or so people are rendezvousing with poet/philosopher, David Whyte.  This gathering is focussed on being a time to deepen one’s commitment to the direction one’s professional or artistic life is taking, or loose it toward a new direction (Don’t worry: I’m in the FORMER camp, not the latter!).  For further inspiration we will spend every afternoon amid the mountains and lakes that surround us, walking the hills and arriving at small pubs and hostelries for the evening meal. David will lead the morning sessions, bringing poetry to bear on the insights he has gained through twenty years of examining the necessities of work, career and relationship. Our accommodation is in a manor house nestled in the foothills of the North Pennines, one of 40 classified areas of outstanding natural beauty in England and Wales. 

If you’ve never heard of David Whyte, a wonderful introduction to his work is The Heart Aroused: Poetry and Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America.  That’s the book that got me hooked.  Now, after reading a stack more of his books, I’m looking forward to finally being able to experience how his brilliant mind works (Don’t count on me coming back with any of his brilliance!).  

Yesterday I visited Best Buy and drooled over a Flip Video mini-camcorder which is popular with video bloggers thinking I might take some video of David Whyte and others on the trip and perhaps post a few video reflections on what’s happening there and potentially on the Phoenix Affirmations.  I decided against it … and then rushed out this morning to purchase one … So for better or worse, you’re going to get some video entries in the coming week, should you care to watch them.  They’ll be posted on YouTube with links provided on this blog.  If you’d rather go straight to the YouTube videos and not go thru the blog, you can type “eelnes” in the search engine and find all my video blog posts (including some videos I’ve posted previously).  However, I do plan on writing a little here, too, not just doing video.  

My first entry is cheesy, and says nothing important, but it’s my very first video blog, shot at the airport in Omaha, so for those who wish, you can click here to view it.

But not to leave you with empty vapor, I thought I’d share one of David Whyte’s poems for your enjoyment:

“In the Beginning”

         by David Whyte (From Fire In the Earth)

Sometimes simplicity rises

            like a blossom of fire

                        from the white silk of your own skin.

You were there in the beginning

            you heard the story, you heard the merciless

                        and tender words telling you where you had to go.

Exile is never easy and the journey

            itself leaves a bitter taste.  But then,

                        when you heard that voice, you had to go.

You couldn’t stay by the fire, you couldn’t live

            so close to the live flame of that compassion

                        you had to go out in the world and make it your own

so you could come back with

            that flame in your voice, saying listen …

                        this warmth, this unbearable light, this fearful love …

It is all here, it is all here.

Can you be angry and loving at the same time?

Here’s another question from the Waterstraat group (The second of two. I responded to the first in the last post):

Many of us seem to have personal stories of frustrations with other, more “conservative” organized religions or individual churches who, to us, seem(ed) to preach a message of fear and exclusion. Many of us fled these other churches and were initially drawn to Countryside by the simple message stamped in the walkway before the front door — “All Are Welcome.” Many of us also seem to have close friends or family members in our lives who believe deeply that their specific brand of Christianity is the “only way,” and who openly tell us that they grieve for us and pray for us hoping that we won’t be “burned in Hell forever.” We find ourselves torn. On one hand we seem to agree that just as we parent our different children in different ways, as individuals, many of us need our “Father” to parent us in different ways — some of us need to be told what to do, and some of us need more leash. We lean on C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, and rejoice that our friends are “in the house,” and we don’t want to fight with them over which room they choose to hang out in. On the other hand, we also agree that Christians who preach a message based on fear and exclusivity to us seem to have completely missed who Jesus really was/is. We want to be angry and loving at the same time, and we’re not sure how to walk this dual path.

Your well-stated desire to be “angry and loving at the same time” is shared with a great many Christians around the country who are concerned with unloving and fear-based manifestations of Christian faith (often due to personal experience of it).  It is clear that you do not wish to manifest the same fear and hate only from a different perspective in making a response – a commendable desire!

Later in Asphalt Jesus I talk about “Good Friday” energy that has seized Christians on both sides of the theological divide.  “Good Friday” energy is the energy of anger, which essentially says, “Someone has crucified the Jesus of my understanding.  I think I know who did it.  So now let’s go get the crucifiers and crucify them!”

In the Seven Deadly Sins series we spoke of Anger being like salt.  A little salt can be a wonderful thing, helping to define and intensify the many and varied flavors of a dish.  Yet if you keep pouring salt, it can turn a great tasting dish into something that’s inedible.  If you pour still more, salt will actually turn a dish into poison.  The key with anger is: can you let go of it?  If you can, great.  If you can’t, then likely anger is poisoning you, as well as those who may be objects of your anger.

In this regard, the late William Sloan-Coffin, senior minister of Riverside Church in New York City, once helpfully observed: “True, we have to hate evil; else we’re sentimental.  But if we hate evil more than we love the good, we become damn good haters, and of those the world already has too many.  However, deep, our anger like that of Christ, must always and only measure our love.”

I think Sloan-Coffin hits the nail on the head.  And notice that he brings Jesus into his equation.  Read through any of the gospels and you find that Jesus could get angry – very angry – at those who were distorting the love of God, neighbor, and/or self.  The self-righteous were particular objects of his anger, as well as religious leaders (often one and the same people).  Jesus could call them a “brood of vipers,” and accuse them of making converts “twice the sons of hell [Gehenna = garbage dump] as you are.”

Thus, if anyone wonders whether it’s possible to criticize fellow believers – even severely – and remain faithful to the Christian Path, one need only turn to the one we claim to follow for confirmation.  Yes, there is an appropriate place for “calling out” those who, in our view, are turning the Path of Love into the Path of Fear and Hatred.  However, we need to do it like Jesus did it.  I believe there’s plenty of evidence in the gospels to suggest that Jesus’ criticisms arose out of a deep conviction regarding the value and worth of those he was criticizing.  His criticisms often have a ring to them like, “I know you’re BETTER THAN THAT!  I know you’re CAPABLE OF SO MUCH MORE!  When will you ever start using the high gifts and graces with which you’ve been entrusted rather than throwing them all away?”

In other words, Jesus engaged the self-righteous, the religious leaders, and so forth, out of deep respect for them.  Otherwise, he wouldn’t have bothered to give them the time of day.   Jesus saw clearly that the objects of his fury were loved beyond their wildest imagination and essentially was screaming, “When are you ever going to start ACTING like it?  When are you going to wake up and hear the music of God’s grace and love wafting through the air? “

When it comes down to it, what shows a person with whom you disagree more respect: criticizing them to their face, or remaining silent and letting them continue their destructive path without challenge (perhaps even criticizing them behind their backs, or writing them off as “hopeless’)?

Personally, if someone has a strong disagreement with me, I’d much prefer that person to come out and state it rather than keeping to her/himself – even if the message came with some degree of anger.  For, in “daring” to be critical, that person also honors me implicitly by (a) believing that I might actually clear my ego aside long enough to listen to what she/he has to say; (b) believing that I have the capacity to weigh this person’s argument and potentially change my ways as a result; (c) believing that I won’t be childish and lash out at the person for bruising my ego; (d) showing that the person, by conversing with me, may actually be willing to hear and respond to my point-of-view after stating hers/his.

Thus, criticism is as much a sign of interest and belief in someone as it is disagreement.  So be angry.  Just make sure to you can let go of it, in which case your anger will likely “add flavor to the dish” rather than poisoning it.  And the best way to ensure that you can let go of your anger (besides praying, which I highly recommend!), is to make sure that love for God, your neighbor, and yourself is not taking a back seat.

By what authority? Eric’s reply to a small group’s question.

I’m thrilled that some of the Asphalt Jesus study groups have not only been conversing over issues of faith within their groups but are, more and more, extending the conversation out to the blog.  Quite a number of questions have come in over the last two days.  I’ll take the next several days to address them, starting with this one from the Waterstraat group:

We are all very open to loving and respecting people of all beliefs and open to believing that the question of salvation is God’s decision and not ours. We believe that God loves all people, and that the “deadline” for truly accepting God’s grace doesn’t need to be bounded by our human life on earth just as our human understanding of “seven days” doesn’t in any way necessarily correlate with God’s view of time. Some of us though are troubled somewhat in that we also want to stand up and state with authority, “I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, AND in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord!” In other words, we do believe that God loves all people and offers salvation to all people, and we do believe that we aren’t the ones who get to determine the timeline, but we also believe that Jesus is the key, and we don’t want to throw Him under the bus or lose sight of Him in this. How do we, for example, say to our many devout Jewish friends, “I believe that God loves you and offers salvation for you just as He does for me, but I believe that that path to salvation is through Jesus?”

What a great set of question (or set of questions, really)!  We’ll all be addressing the relationship between Christianity and other faiths when the groups move into Chapter 4 (“Jesus First Baptist Church) and Affirmation 1.  However, for the time being, let me focus on one particular statement made above.  Your group expresses a desire to “stand up and state with authority” that “I believe in God … and in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord.”

Readers familiar with the Apostle’s Creed will recognize these words, as they come straight from it and are recited by Lutherans, Episcopalians, Catholics and others a weekly basis in worship.  Yet, I note that you only cite the first couple lines of the Apostle’s Creed.  Was this for brevity’s sake, or was it because the Creed in its entirety does not express what you truly believe?  For instance, the very next line of the Creed states, “He [Jesus] was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.”  Does belief in the virgin birth elicit the same desire to stand up and speak with authority?  How about the Creed’s articulated belief in hell, the second coming, or the physical, bodily resurrection of believers?

I’m not suggesting that all members of the study group will object logically or theologically to all of the Creed’s beliefs, but I suspect that agreement breaks down rapidly the further one moves into the Creed.  Even in churches where the Creed is stated each week (Lutheran, Episcopalian, Catholic, etc), I find it hard to find a single person who affirms all the Creed’s statements.  Members will tell me privately something to the effect of, “Of course, I don’t actually believe all this [nudge, nudge, wink, wink] … but it’s our tradition … it’s The Creed.”  I don’t know about you, but I don’t find it particularly amusing to stand before God in worship as a congregation on a weekly basis and publicly lie.

I may appear a bit “off topic” here, with respect to your question, but your stated desire is to “state with authority” a the portion of the Apostle’s Creed that states a belief in God and Jesus.  Yet upon what does this desired authority rest?  On the authority of the Creed?  If so, then the Creed would demand ascription to ALL of its statements, not just certain ones.  That’s what Creeds are about. Creeds serve as tests of faith, as opposed to Affirmations, which serve as testimonies of faith.  Creeds serve to judge who is a “legitimate” Christian or member of a church and who is not.  You can literally be kicked out of certain churches, or excommunicated, for refusal to recognize the authority of the Creed.  By contrast, Affirmations have no authority beyond personal faith statement. No one can use a set of Affirmations (Phoenix Affirmations or otherwise) as a basis for judging the legitimacy of anyone’s faith.  There is no authority beyond, “This I believe …”

In other words, the Phoenix Affirmations, like other Affirmations such as the United Church of Christ’s “Statement of Faith,” base their only authority on the experience and beliefs of the person making them, and nothing else.  This isn’t much authority!  But ask yourself, how much more authority would you really like, and at what cost to yourself … and others?

The Phoenix Affirmations do, in fact, assert a belief in God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.  The Affirmations also state that we who ascribe to them them “walk fully in the path of Jesus.”  Where the Affirmations stop short is in the statement that anyone beyond ourselves must believe in these things.  Surely, and hopefully, a great many more people do believe them.  Yet because there is no requirement to do so, this means that no one needs to feel pressured to affirm them.  No one need pretend to ascribe to these beliefs in order to become or remain an active member of any church or faith gathering, and thus the only people who state them publicly are those who truly believe them.

This principle gives the Phoenix Affirmations and others like them a special authority – that of honesty.  Personally, that’s enough for me.