The Complexity of Faith

Instead of complaining that God had hidden Himself, you will give Him thanks for not having revealed so much of Himself: and you will also give Him thanks for not having revealed Himself to haughty sages, unworthy to know so holy a God.

Two kinds of persons know Him: those who have a humble heart, and who love lowliness, whatever kind of intellect they may have, high or low; and those who have sufficient understanding to see the truth, whatever opposition they may have to it.

Pascal, Pensées

I find it fascinating that in a faith as complex and ambiguous as Christianity can sometimes be there are people who are altogether too eager to claim that they have cornered the market on God. Even more fascinating, and perhaps more disturbing, is the grand certainty with which people make claims about that God—who God hates, for instance. There are people who can give you five steps to a better prayer life, eight steps to reaching the lost, three principles for ethical living, and ten days to a deeper faith. There are people that are too quick with an answer to tough questions: Why did my child die? Why do I need to pray? Why has Jesus not returned? Why are there hungry people in a world that produces more food than it can consume?

For Christians, faith is paradoxical. On the one hand, we find simplicity: We were separated from God because of our sin, and God took pains through Jesus to reconcile us to God’s self. On the other hand, the way that that faith plays itself out in every day life is vastly more perplexing: How am I to live as a Christian in the context of a cut-throat business environment? Are my loyalties to God or the country of my birth? How do I cope with the feeling that God is somehow absent? How do I hold onto my faith in the face of those who would destroy it?

For those of us for whom it is not always possible to affirm that faith just “gets sweeter and sweeter as the days go by,” for those of us who don’t have the handy theological slide-rule that much of popular Christianity seems always at the ready to produce, providing a snappy answer to the faith’s toughest questions, for those of us for whom faith is oftentimes more a “Jacobian” struggle with God than a tender walk “to the garden alone,” we must remember that our job as Christians is not to produce trite sayings in the face of difficult questions, but to struggle together in humility toward the truth.

Humility and truth—it is next to impossible to find the latter without the former. Perhaps the three most important words in theology are “I don’t know.” Faith is an arduous journey, often through deep darkness, which frequently provides more questions than answers; it is not a sunny jaunt through the daffodils that requires nothing more of us than to memorize a few trite sayings. Don’t be overly alarmed, though, because the journey upon which we embark has as its solace the fact that we do it together, hand in hand, with Jesus ever near.

Prayer & Facebook

Sometime ago I got a Facebook message from someone I know off IRL but have never meet. The message said, “Today your face popped up in my friends corner which means you are one of the 6 people I’m praying for today. Have a great day, Ryan!”

I was stunned. I heard all about this person and the works they did at the church I was working at prior to my arrival. I wanted to meet them but it just never worked out. I went on to become a missionary and then to seminary and now in parish ministry and I get a message from this person telling me that they are praying for me that day cause I came up within one of their 6 boxes of friends I generally ignore on Facebook.

I was moved by this gesture. These prayers touched me and I was moved to prayer. I have been praying for some difficulties in my life and faith. Here was a stranger that I admired praying with me in these hard times. I took on her cause and began praying for the first 6 faces that pop up on my profile page every morning and sending them that simple message that I recieved, ” Today your face popped up in my friends corner which means you are one of the 6 people I’m praying for today. Have a great day, !“

I am going to encourage my congregation to participate in this semi-silent ministry of pray using Facebook to touch the lives of our friends [virtual or not] and be the light of Christ in this mourning world.

Imagine if all that had faith in a god could pray or meditate for those 6 faces that pop up. Imagine your inboxes full of simple messages of prayer and unity. It could happen. It begins with you. I invite you to join this simple cause and simple message, “Today your face popped up in my friends corner which means you are one of the 6 people I’m praying for today. Have a great day, !“

Peace be with you all!

Pain Isn't All Bad

“Holy and beneficial is the time of preparation in which the Almighty Judge is moved to show us mercy, to show repentance to the sinner, and to offer peace to the just. All things (this week) are now prepared for pardon, the sinner for confession, and the tongue to plead for mercy” (Maximos the Confessor).

Here we stand. Lent is about to culminate in the tragic passion of Holy Week. Our study, prayer and devotion have all worked together to bring us to this point. Lent has shown us the overpowering reality of the power of darkness in our lives; it has allowed us to see the grave consequences of our sin as they reach their natural conclusion on Good Friday. But more than that, Lent has taught us that the life we thought we were living apart from Christ was really death. All the pretensions to importance and busyness have been shown to be masks attempting to cover our confusion and lostness. Lent lays bare before us that which we had hoped to avoid--namely, the fact that apart from Christ we are dead.

Growing up, I thought Lent was something that Catholics did, which had something vaguely to do with giving up candy. Now, I see the whole matter differently. Giving up something dear to us for Lent is not a way to polish our halos, not a way to reestablish a righteousness based on our own efforts. Rather, the spiritual disciplines of Lent allow us an opportunity to say to a world bent on avoiding pain at all costs, that we are a people who identify with a Savior who endured great pain to save us from the sin that beset us, that we are a people for whom sacrifice and service is a part of life. If one of the main images of our faith is a man hanging on a tree, how could it be otherwise?

Lent provides a context in which to understand the state of our hopelessness, and makes provision for our reconciliation to the Christ we had a hand in crucifying. In the final analysis, Lent has shown us, both that we are sinners in need of repentance and that God refuses to hold our sin against us.

Even after our complicity in the grave iniquity committed during Holy Week, a way to God has been provided through Jesus. And that, my friends, is why we have the audacity to call any week as gruesome as this one . . . holy—and any day as awful as Friday . . . good, because we know that the path to new life leads through “the valley of the shadow of death.” And we have a Savior who walked through it before us.

Lent may at times be painful, but you will never fully understand Easter apart from the pain it took Jesus to get there. “All things are now prepared for pardon, the sinner for confession, and the tongue to plead for mercy.” Maximos knew. It couldn’t be otherwise.

Just Hanging On

“Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed” (Heb. 12:12-13).

At one point in the church I served some years back, we had a particularly large spate of deaths. People who had been pillars began to die, and the effect unnerved everyone. One lady said to me, “Preacher, it looks like this year is going to be one for the books.”

At the time, I wished I knew what to say to that. Even now I wish I could say that death happens, and that people get sick, and that people suffer, and that that is all a part of life this side of the eschaton. Actually, what I mean to say is that I wish I could say all of that in a way that would make sense of all the tears. I wish I could say something that eased the ache in all of our hearts when fear confronts us. I wish I could say something really pastoral, full of confidence and solace. I wish . . .

I knew that there were people hurting in our church. There were people who were afraid of what our church would look like after we had fought our battle of attrition with death, people afraid of what life would look like without our heroes, without the faces we had counted on to pick us up when we had fallen, to soothe us when we mourned, to chastise us when we quit, to teach us when we sought, to lead us when we wandered.

In my personal life, as many of you are aware, it appears as though “this is going to be one for the books.” With both my father in Hospice and my youngest brother with an advanced form of colo-rectal cancer, things have weighed heavily on my family recently. I want to thank all of you who have asked about and prayed for the situation my family faces. I’m grateful for your love and support. But I’m not the only one facing difficult times. I know that many of you also have concerns about your loved ones, anxiety about what your future may hold. Please know that you’re part of a community that longs to walk beside you through uncertain times—even when we don’t have any good answers to give.

Most days, getting out of bed is a habit for us that requires little thought and little motivation. But when the skies darken and our horizons fade in the night, figuring out how to survive another day, let alone move forward, without the certainty that the familiar human landmarks of our lives will always be with us seems impossible. Despair comes easy.

And yet, somehow God calls us forward. Like a lover God stands before us, wooing us toward our collective future, asking not that we should forget our pain, but that we should endure in spite of it. In the face of great pain God neither requires great acts of bravery, nor does God expect it; what God requires and expects of us is faithfulness. Because in some ironic twist of circumstance, our faithfulness in the face of our fear and grief transforms us into models for those who come behind us. Then, even though we are scarred, we may be healed.

Sometimes hanging on is the best we can do. According to our faith, sometimes hanging on is the best there is. Thanks for helping me hang on.

Raising Children in the Household of God

“I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:14-15).

The church in America has confidence problems. And, perhaps, rightly so. We have failed on any number of fronts to live as the people of God in a foreign land. Feeling our story to be a bit too radical, we have convinced ourselves that our story is not all that different from the stories of the culture around us. It is only through the most egregious and idiosyncratic misreading of the New Testament, for example, that we can justify dropping bombs on people as a way of achieving peace. Rigorous intellectual gymnastics are required to read the New Testament and still come away believing that the accumulation of more and more stuff has no moral implications, or that to be better Christians we merely need to accumulate more and more “Christian” stuff. Jesus’ words about turning the other cheek and camels going through the eye of a needle seem fanatical and outlandish in a world in which violence and wealth are romantic ideals. We much prefer to blunt the razor’s edge of Scripture. “Surely, Jesus didn’t really mean it when he said . . .”

Chop a little bit off here, rationalize a little bit there, and pretty soon the Church begins to look and sound like everybody else–with a little extra Jesus language thrown in for good measure. In fact, there are those among us who think that what we need to do is to get the world to look and act a little bit more like the church, in effect blurring the line between the church and the world in the name of relevancy. The Church in America is so unsure of itself, so insecure about its own ability to produce disciples that there are actually people who think that we ought to turn to the government and the public school system to prop up our flagging faith. Is the church in such bad shape that the best we can offer young people are proposals to “teach the Bible in school,” to put “prayer and the Ten Commandments back in the classroom?” Is Christian leadership in this state so impotent that it would consider abdicating its responsibility for the teaching of the faith in favor of cheap sloganeering? Praying, living a moral life are practices that need to be taught and learned within the context of a worshiping community whose goal it is to form saints. They are the treasures of the church; they can’t just be farmed out when the church gets tired of the hard work of teaching them. Beyond that, praying and the moral life are unintelligible to a world whose view of morality is not already shaped by the cross.

The author of First Timothy is writing to a congregation that is trying to come to terms with its place in an apparently hostile society. In the first thirteen verses of chapter three, he describes the characteristics that will be present in good leaders. Interestingly enough, he says very little about the actual functions of bishops (episkopoi) and deacons (diakonoi). Instead, the author is careful to point out what type of folks are suited to those offices. Why is that? Because leadership in the church, from the very beginning, was seen as a position vital to the community precisely to the extent that it put forward leaders who could teach others what it meant to be a good Christian. Leaders in the early church were given the responsibility of teaching the faith, of passing on the tradition. That understanding of teaching, however, assumed not only a facility with words, but a life worthy of imitation. Being a leader in the early church entailed so much more than being able to recite the Ten Commandments, it required a commitment to living them.

The early church knew what we have apparently forgotten: learning something as complex praying and learning to read the Bible necessitates seeing it embodied in people who are held up as examples. You don’t turn over something as precious as that to just anyone. You don’t just tack up your prized possessions on the wall and hope somebody pays attention.

If the Church is ever going to be “the pillar and bulwark of the truth,” it is going to have to quit hoping that someone else will raise our children.

On Doing Significant Things

I find it very easy to feel as if I have nothing of value left to say. I’ve been writing and preaching and talking about all manner of things — religious and otherwise — for (what seems to me, at least) so long now. Whenever I open my mouth or put pen to paper, I want to say something intelligent, important. Perhaps even more than that, and I am almost embarrassed to say it, I would like to produce something original. That is to say, I would like to say or write something that is unique to me, something that no one has ever said or written before. Why do I have this great need to be original? Pride, I suppose. We all want to leave our mark on the world, to leave something to prove, not only that we were here, but that our existence made a difference, that it meant something more than the amount of Doritos we consumed or the total hours we spent sitting in front of The Biggest Loser.

Ministers are just as prone to that sort of preoccupation as everyone else — maybe more, because most ministers enter the ministry as a way of being involved in matters substantive (perhaps even eternal), as a way of being God’s agent in bringing about transformation, as a way of making a difference. Most of the time, though, ministers—like everybody else must content themselves with the mundane, peripheral things of life (i.e., what we shall eat, what we shall drink, what we shall wear, etc.). It’s easy to believe, after having seen the same faces week in and week out, that what happens in church makes little difference at all in people’s lives. The everydayness of it lulls us into thinking that the words we say, the songs we sing, the baptisms we perform, the Eucharist over which we preside, has so little power or relevance in our age.

We’re wrong, of course. As Annie Dillard writes in her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk:

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely evoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.

Anyone with any sense knows that what we do as a church, the rituals we practice, the words we use have in them (due to their proximate relationship to God) the power to heal the sick and raise the dead. It is no empty thing to say to a person during communion: “The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven. The Blood of Christ, the Cup of Salvation.” People have died for uttering words like that, and, just as importantly, the dead have been raised with words like that. And if things like that aren’t intelligent or important enough to distinguish us, not original enough to help us make our mark — nothing is.

The Stuff I Have

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there you heart will also be” (Luke 12:32-34).

Some years ago my friend Mike received a strange phone call from a tire salesman. Mike had gone to Doyle’s Tires the week before to buy a tire, and had met this man. The man didn’t call to sell him tires, however.

He said, “Look, I know this is a shot in the dark and all. But a couple of us have recently gone together to start a business, and it has become quite lucrative. This must sound awfully strange to you, but when I saw you in the store last week I could tell you looked like a sharp person and I noticed that you carried yourself well. So, I was wondering, well, if you’d be interested in pursuing some other avenues of financial stability?”

Mike, upon hearing the man’s question, said, straightforwardly and matter‑of‑factly, “Nope.”

The man said, “Uh, excuse me.”

Mike said, “No, I wouldn’t be interested in pursuing some other avenues of financial success.”

“Did you say, ‘No’?”the man asked, apparently not quite tuned into the tone of the conversation.

“Yes, that’s right, I said ‘No.’”

And the man said, “You mean to tell me you wouldn’t be interested in making more money, securing your future financially?”

“That’s right. I have absolutely no interest in making more money.”

“Why?”

And Mike said, “Because I’m a Christian.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“It has everything to do with everything. Because as a Christian I think life is about getting rid of the stuff I have, not getting more. I think it’s about selling what I have and giving it away and ending up with absolutely nothing. I believe that it’s contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ to go through life trying to get more and more. I believe that it’s the devil himself who tries to convince me that the goal and end of my life is to secure my future. My problems in life don’t stem from the fact that I don’t have enough stuff. Quite to the contrary, most of my problems stem from the fact that the stuff I have is always in danger of having me, of taking my eyes off of the true source of my life.”

Then Mike said, “Listen, are you a Christian?”

And the man said, “Well, yes.”

“Well, then, let me give you an opportunity to repent of this foolishness, to risk it all by giving up any notion that you can secure one iota of your life, and come back to the gospel. Let me ask you a question: Would you be interested in pursuing some other avenues of Christian faithfulness by getting rid of the stuff you have, and vowing not pursue the accumulation of more stuff?”

And when he heard this he was shocked and went away grieving for he had many possessions.

Well, Mike didn’t actually say any of that. What he really said was “No thank you,” and then hung up the phone. But what if he had said it? What kind of a church would we have to be to produce someone who could say something like that? That’s really the question, isn’t it?

Social Media at Douglass Boulevard

For some time, our church, like many others, has had a presence in the virtual world of the Internet alongside its presence in the real world of Louisville, KY. We have a website whose current version is the best our church has ever seen. We have the blog you are reading right now, and we also have a page on Facebook, the social networking site, and a feed on Twitter, the microblogging site. As strange and unfamiliar as these two latter items-- "social media," in the fast-moving parlance of Internet-speak-- may seem, they in fact allow us Christians to pursue ministries we have already been pursuing for a long time. We have always been witnesses to our friends both near and far, in our work, family, and private lives, and we have always been connected with all Christians in the worldwide community of Disciples and believers. Pope Benedict XVI of the Roman Catholic Church has proclaimed social media's potential role in the future church. Their emphasis on connectivity and effacing boundaries are a natural fit with the ecumenical and unifying focus that has animated the Disciples of Christ tradition from its beginnings. Social media afford us a different way of living out Christian community-- one that doesn't replace our real-world community, but allows us to enhance it and extend it in novel ways.

Our church's ventures into social media, however, have up to now lacked a single, deliberate focus. This statement isn't meant as a criticism of the efforts that Derek, Ryan, Jennifer, and others have made in this area. Far from it-- their efforts have laid crucial foundations. They simply lack the time to give social media the kind of focus it requires. As anyone with a Facebook page or Twitter account knows, social media require daily attention and updating; they need not consume more than a few minutes of one's day, but they need at least that much.

So, as of last Thursday I am now our church's social media coordinator, which means that I am the central focal point for our church's presence on the two main social media sites, Facebook and Twitter. Derek and Ryan will continue to communicate with us via these tools, and they and Administrative Secretary Jennifer Vandiver will continue to have primary responsibility for maintaining the church website, blog, and other communications such as the newsletter. Sue Raymond has also volunteered to lend her talents to help develop our church website further. My role will be to ensure that our church's presence in the social-media world is constant, meaningful, and in keeping with the values and commitments that shape our real-world community of faith.

For now, I am adopting a very modest "editorial policy," for lack of a better word, when it comes to my new social-media role. I am keenly aware of the difference between speaking for oneself and representing the congregation, and so I deliberately plan to avoid using DBCC's Facebook page and Twitter feed to offer personal commentary. (Besides, I have my own Facebook page for that-- look me up!) In the coming weeks, I will be working with all who are interested on developing specific policies for our church's use of social media that will help us avoid some possible pitfalls these tools create. I am of course open to any suggestions you may have for our social media presence, in regards to both policies and content.

So: Feel free to shoot me an e-mail; post a comment to this blog post; or contact Derek, Ryan, or me over Facebook or Twitter. Above all, let the conversation begin!

On Remembering

“How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy” (Psalm 137:4-6).

I remember when I first found out that my parents had sold their home in Michigan and were moving to Boston. My Dad was the product of downsizing. That he had a new job to go to means he was one of the lucky ones. But the vicissitudes of the economic climate is not what I want to talk about, although that is territory ripe for interpretation. I want to talk about memory.

My parents had lived in that house almost nineteen years. For some of folks, that’s no great feat. Some folks have lived in homes all their lives. I, on the other hand, by the time I was in seventh grade had moved six times. So, when we moved to Grandville, Michigan in March of 1978, I was a seasoned veteran of the uprooting and dismantling that comes with taking up a new residence. But we made the move, just after the blizzard of ‘78, with the idea that things would be different, that we would set up shop in one spot for a while, say “good riddance” to the peripatetic lifestyle, put down roots. And, for better or worse, that is what we did. I graduated from high school there, as did my younger brothers and sister. And somewhere along the line, I got the idea that I was from someplace, not merely a series of disconnected someplaces.

Prior to moving to Grandville, whenever people asked me where I was from, I had a choice. I could say that I was from central Illinois or northern Indiana, that I was born southeast of Chicago or that I lived three miles from the University of Notre Dame. But after living in Grandville, at some point, I began to think of myself as having a hometown, with all the idiosyncrasies and joys that come from living in one place, among a particular group of people, for an extended period of time.

The reason I say all this is because I remember when it occurred to me, after I heard my parents were leaving, that I will never again be able to walk down the street I grew up on, and walk up to the two-story brick and clapboard house on Carmel Avenue, and walk through the door without being arrested. I thought, of course, about how the basement was always too musty, and about the long strip of dirt that ran through the backyard and how my dad could never get grass to grow there because every time he planted it we’d go out and trample it down again playing baseball or football or kickball. I thought about the big painting of blue flowers in a vase that hung over the mantle in the living room, and the basketball court in the driveway. I thought about how the kitchen smelled when my mother cooked, and how the shower never had enough pressure, and how I used to slide my hands down the banister and swing from the top floor to the main floor in one, gigantic swoop. And I thought about how I was forced to say goodbye to those things.

I suppose that is what was painful about the whole affair to me, not that I’ll not see those things again, because in my memory I can see them whenever I wish, nor that I will no longer have a home, because my home is here with Susan, Samuel, Mary Grace, and Dominic, and with all of you, but that I had to say goodbye to a place that, for all its leaks and creaks, had served as an anchor for my memory. And while saying goodbye is never easy, it is something all of us must do, if only to say goodbye to each day as it rises and falls back into the pool of memory. Because memory is where so much of who we are and whom we’ve known lives.

What I will miss about the house I grew up in, of course, are all the things that trigger my memory. On the other hand, all the memories that are truest and dearest to me are with me now, and will always be. Remembering is what makes living possible, what makes being a Christian possible. Every crack in the ceiling and every bit of bread and wine give us the strength to go on when going on seems entirely out of the question. Without memory, we couldn’t get out of bed in the morning—and without the memory of God in our lives, working through our lives and our memories, we wouldn’t have any reason to.

On Having Our Needs Met

“What should be done then, my friends? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up” (1 Cor. 14:26).

It’s easy to conceive of the church as if it’s selling something, isn’t it? I was at a meeting one time in which a very nice Christian gentleman made the observation that most ministers weren’t very excited about their product, which was why they were having a hard time selling it to teenagers—as if faith were a purchasable, consumable commodity and the church was the clearinghouse. And if that’s the case, then the church’s job is merely to package Jesus so that the greatest number of people will buy. If the Jesus of Scripture is too demanding, we’ll just sell him as “your friend,” the pal you’ve always been looking for. If the commitment to the church described in the Bible scares off potential buyers, why then we’ll just have to ease up on the requirements.

But then one day we wake up to find that Jesus is no longer savior, the one who establishes a kingdom at odds with the kingdoms of this world, but now he’s merely a personal genie who’s only purpose is to make our lives more satisfying. When the church is designed to meet people’s “felt needs,” we wind up not with a community whose desire it is to help fit disciples of Jesus for the kingdom of God, but a group of individuals whose primary interest is to get their needs met—as they see them. In that kind of church decisions are made, not on the basis of what Scripture calls for as discerned through the wisdom of the community, but on the basis of what decision will make the fewest people upset. If church is only about getting our needs met, then why should anybody ever get angry?

I read one time about a church in Eustis, Florida that offers a sort of “worship-lite.” They changed the sign in front of the church to read: Express Worship, 45 Minutes, Guaranteed! It seems that people were skipping out on church because they thought the service was too long. Consequently, the minister, seeking to meet as many needs as possible, started hacking away at the order of service until he got it down to a manageable time frame. Members of the Family Bible Church apparently love it. “You don’t feel like you’re spending all day in church,” says Joy Easton, a regular worshiper. Another regular, Ernie Quinton, agrees: “Some people don’t want to spend an hour, an hour and a half in church.” The minister, Allen Speegle, says much when he says, “So many people are in a time crunch, but they don’t want to leave the Lord out.” That makes sense, doesn’t it? You love Jesus, you just hate for him to goof up your weekend. And so the church responds by adapting itself to meet people’s needs.

The popular belief among many American Christians seems to be that faith is a private affair, that the primary reason the church worships is so that I might get my needs met. But Paul, in his letter to the church at Corinth, took exception to the idea that what is important is that I get my needs, as I see them, met. He was speaking specifically to folks who spoke in tongues in a way that privatized worship, satisfying felt needs. He was saying that worship is for the upbuilding of the body of Christ, and anything that focuses first on the private, rather than on the body, is to be strenuously avoided.

And if we were ever to catch Paul’s vision that we have been called not to islands of private euphoria but to be a part of that ragtag group of folks God has chosen to embody the message of grace to a self-involved world, then we might truly have our needs met.

What Does God Want?

Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let I t be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her (Luke 1:38).

Salvation, it seems to me, has very much to do with God getting what God wants. Advent, on this reading, is about salvation. The world existed in pain, suffering, war, injustice, abuse, hunger—in short, sin—and so along came Jesus. But for what? What was it Jesus came to do—or undo? I think it’s not so simple as to say that Jesus came to save the world. If that’s the extent of the answer, then we’re left to wonder just what saving the world means. On the lips of many Christians, of course, salvation means something like being delivered from this life to a better one in a better place. This particular take on salvation has certainly offered strength in times of great travail and oppression—just read the lyrics to some of the old Negro Spirituals. “We shall overcome . . . someday” is powerful medicine in the midst of a world threatening to implode. On the other hand, as has often been pointed out, salvation as personal deliverance, if we’re not careful, can inoculate us against experiencing any sense of urgency about the world we inhabit here and now. A rival interpretation of salvation has to do with reconstructing the world we live in now. This view of salvation has the advantage of maintaining a sense of urgency about the world we inhabit, but it also can lull us into thinking that that reconstruction depends on us instead of God for its success.

Whether this is theologically true, the easy way to proceed rhetorically would be for me to say that the true meaning of salvation lies somewhere in the middle, between the hereafter and the here and now. And it may just be true—or not; settling that one would take more time and brains than I have. What does seem clear to me, however, is that both soteriological extremes are largely beside the point. What both of those understandings have in their sights is success—either a successful afterlife or a successful present life, neither of which are something to be dismissed lightly. Following Jesus, however, has never been primarily about success (at least success in the way most people understand it). Instead, following Jesus is about attempting to align ourselves with what God wants; and if Jesus is any indication, what God wants is the death of everything that stands in the way of God getting what God wants, which, when all is said and done, is us. At least according to Jesus, gaining the whole world and keeping our souls is a soteriological non-starter. Salvation is first about laying down, giving up, relinquishing, letting go. It’s only in letting go of everything that we have room to receive anything.

All of which brings me to Mary. Of the few words recorded from her mouth in the Gospels, some of the most instructive come after she’s been told that she has been selected to bear God for the world. She says by way of reply, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” It’s interesting to note that her first response isn’t, “What do I get out of it?” Rather, she immediately directs attention to what God ought rightfully to expect to get out of it—that is, Mary herself.

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” That’s God getting what God wants. That’s salvation. And if we were ever to do the hard work of imitating Mary, there just might be a new heaven and new earth in it for everyone.

Violence and the Naïve

“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. . . . They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:6, 9).

So we Christians do not oppose nuclear weapons because they threaten to destroy ‘mother earth,’ but because the God we serve would not have one life unjustly killed even if such a killing would insure the survival of the human species (Stanley Hauerwas, Sanctify Them in Truth: Holiness Exemplified, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998: 192).

In The Brothers Karamozov, Alyosha Karamozov and his brother, Ivan, have a conversation in which Alyosha, a postulant at the monastery, seeks to understand Ivan’s seemingly entrenched agnosticism. Ivan, in explaining his philosophy turns to the question of theodicy (i.e., the goodness of God put to the question of human suffering) to demonstrate his understanding of the universe as essentially unjust. He cannot get his mind past the very basic question of God’s righteousness in the face of wanton suffering, especially the suffering of children who are presumably innocent.

Ivan gives a series of accounts in which children are the object of profound suffering. One story that is particularly horrifying recounts the tragedy of a five-year-old girl who is tortured by her parents for dirtying her bed. Her mother makes her eat her own excrement and locks her in an outhouse every night, even in the dead of winter. Ivan wonders how the mother can sleep at night while her daughter beats her chest and cries out to “gentle Jesus” for help.

He then puts a question to young Alyosha:

‘Let’s assume that you were called upon to build the edifice of human destiny so that men would finally be happy and would find peace and tranquility. If you knew that, in order to attain this, you would have to torture just one single creature, let’s say the little girl who beat her chest so desperately in the outhouse, and that on her unavenged tears you could build that edifice, would you agree to do it?” Tell me and don’t lie!’

‘No, I would not,’ Alyosha said softly. (The Brothers Karamozov, 296)

In a world that casually assumes the fact of violence as woven into the fabric of the universe, Alyosha’s reticence is puzzling. We think, “If you had a chance to bring happiness and peace and tranquility to all humanity, and all it would cost is the suffering and torture of one innocent creature, and you didn’t do it, you would be stupid.” Of course, we try to limit “civilian casualties” and “collateral damage,” but we all know that peace (progress, democracy, justice, a new world order, etc.) come with a cost. Only the most hopelessly naive think that peace occurs without a few “civilian casualties.” Only the most credulous believe that the happiness of the world can be secured without a little “collateral damage.” No pain, no gain.

And yet, maybe there is something to be said for a guileless vision of the world in which the structures of happiness and peace and tranquility will no longer be built on the back of the suffering caused by our relentless pursuit of peace by violent means. Maybe there exists a way of looking at the world in which no violence, no matter how well intended, can ensure the reconciliation of enemies. Maybe there survives a way of construing the world that depends no longer on the blood of children to make the world a safer place, but insists on relying on God to secure our future.

Nah. You’d have to be pretty stupid to look for a world like that.

Forgive us Christians who are a bit skeptical about the world’s ability to pick and choose which innocents have to die to secure peace. We have a good memory. We remember a time when those in power got together to secure peace by killing an innocent man.

Well, on second thought, maybe you can build a peaceful world on the back of the suffering of one innocent man. I suppose it depends on the man.

DBCC Book Club!

New for 2010! We are forming a book club to meet Wednesday nights from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

We will explore a range of authors and genres, including fiction & non-fiction. Some of you may have already read some of our selections. We sought to select a few obscure titles that you may have never thought to read. We have included a couple of familiar titles as well. We will read voices from the margins and some dominate voices that challenge the world we live in.

We are excited to offer this space for us all to journey together and explore the divine nature of all of humanity. Below is a list of the twelve titles we shall be reading and the months in which we will be reading them


January

"Wise Blood" by Flannery O'Connor

February

"The Sabbath" by Abraham Joshua Herschel

March

"The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver

April

"The Shack" by William P. Young

May

"Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" by Christopher Moore

June

"The Seven Story Mountain" by Thomas Merton

July

"The White Bone" by Barbara Gowdy

August
"The Cloister Walk" by Kathleen Norris

September
"White Like Me" by Tim Wise

October
"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson

November
"Petals of Blood" by Nguigi Wa Thiong'o

December

"How to Be Good" by Nick Hornby

If you would like to participate in this book club you may receive a 20% discount on each book at Carmichael's Book Store on Bardstown Road by mentioning that you are part of the Douglass Book Club.

Mucho-Mucho [Thoughts from Joe Carolyn Brown]

It’s Friday already and what a week it has been! Mixed in with work on bathrooms, painting rooms and halls, working on the grounds (with a mixture of skilled and unskilled labor) has been major satisfaction in seeing smiles on the faces of children, hugs for no special reason, and much laughter. The greatest frustration has been our inability to communicate with the children. After “hola,” there isn’t much to say, even though it’s amazing how much can be communicated through sign language and facial expressions. For instance, Luis and Fernando were comparing muscles, when Joe wanted to show his own and said, “Mucho grande.” To this, Luis replied, “Mucho nada.” We are determined, however, that we’ll be more proficient in the language if we return.
Today we felt we were returning home since we were treated to oatmeal and croissants for breakfast. The children have a day off from school and the front lawn has turned into a pastel sea as they play with balloons.
Most of our work tasks have been completed and today offers the opportunity to be with the children in the morning and take a trip to town in the afternoon.
We’ve learned a lot this week. We’ve witnessed a large number of children living together in harmony, under the guidance of wonderful houseparents. Selene is the ultimate multi-tasker, braiding hair, talking with children, and giving instructions in the kitchen concurrently. We’ve seen how older children take responsibility for younger children. We are impressed with the degree of happiness we see in the children and the level of structure that makes the home function effectively. Tonight we will have dinner with the children and participate in their movie night. Then-- up early tomorrow and back to Louisville.

Greetings de Karen O. con San Luis Potosi

Today is Thursday and our 3rd big work day. My most valuable item has been a pair of work gloves, actually two pair.
I have worked almost exclusively on cleaning up the grounds. This project has given me a wonderful chance to get to know some knew people from the church.

I came prepared for rain, since I took my information from the internet weather channel, and am happy to report that the weather has been awesome. Its too bad we don’t have time to work on our tans.
Along with many other firsts, this is my first every blog. It sure seems like an awfully far distance to travel to learn a new computer skill, but the trip itself has been so full of firsts that it seems fitting. My first papaya, my first morning to use a rooster as an alarm clock, my first chance to see a day of hard work bring smiles and nods of appreciation from people I can’t otherwise communicate with and my first chance to enjoy the Ben and Ryan comedy routine. Everyone should look forward to the opportunity of having such rewarding and fun firsts in their future.

They Say They're Worth a Thousand Words...

You can click on each photo to view a larger version of the image.

Harriet’s Thoughts

Today is Monday! We were awakened as usual by the crow of the rosters (7:00 A.M.) and the patter of little girls’ feet up and down the hall getting ready for school in their red, pleated skirts and red tops. The young ones go to school in the morning and the older children go later in the day at 2:00 P.M.
After breakfast, our DBCC group met to decide on the projects for today, and another trip to Home Depot and Walmart was made by several to get supplies.


Upgrading the boys and girls bathrooms and setting up a new, larger girls’ clothing room with new shelving were begun.


Cleaning up the yard and play areas for the children was also started. When the little children came home from school at noon, they were “ right in there” with us wanting to participate or just see what was going on.


We have accomplished so much today already, and everyone in our DBCC group has jumped right in to do all they can in this mission of love and caring which we are now experiencing.

Casa Hogar is an amazing place!!! John and his wife Selene, who are their “mission parents”, have a wonderfully run home for these 18 girls and 13 boys. The children are beautifully behaved and get along with each other so well. Each one is responsible for certain chores, which they willingly do, and they have a daily routine that works very well for all.


The excitement of the children at having us here is unbelievable. They are curious about us, love to love on us, and they have enjoyed the games, candy, flashlights, and stickers, etc. that we brought to them. We, in turn, are so awed by these adorable, beautiful children and the love and hope they are given here at Casa Hagar. Each day we see “how God is working in this place”!!!

Waiting for Something Big in San Luis Potosi

Here are some thoughts from Ben Carter:

I had never been to Mexico. I have lived, worked, studied and played in other countries for over three years of my life, but had never visited our friendly neighbors down south. I had little idea of what to expect, forgoing the usual research to finishing essential "to dos" at home so I could return home to a job and a wife. I knew many buildings would probably be constructed of the ubiquitous orange brick that pervades many developing countries. I knew many of those same buildings would have rebar sticking out the roof in anticipation of adding another floor when money permitted. I knew to expect the familiar pull of strangeness, the reaffirmation that the world is, indeed, quite large.

The magic of travel is in expectations. Though my expectations of this trip were poorly formed, deep down I expect the same thing every time: something big. And, I believe that expectation is not just hope, but prophesy. That is, expecting bigness alters the cosmos and brings bigness to me. (I say the same for other expectations: smallness, strife, magnanimity, compassion, etc. As a devout English major, I believe in words' abilities to alter our universe). So, I came expecting something big.

While waiting for the big--some revelation, connection, emotion--I was washing dishes. Thanks to Ticht Naht Hanh, washing dishes can never be for me just about washing dishes. Instead, washing dishes is, like every moment, an opportunity to live a fully present, miraculous moment. Ticht Naht Hanh transforms the mundane into the transcendent, with each moment a benediction. Don't misunderstand me. I don't live like this. For me, starting the car is usually just starting the car, sweeping the floor merely an opportunity to zone out. But, when Ticht Naht Hanh articulated his worldview in which each moment is pregnant with the divine, he used the example of washing dishes. So, for me, washing dishes is more than just washing dishes.

And so I was washing dishes, thinking of Ticht Naht Hanh, and expecting something big.

Wait.

More precisely, I was washing dishes with Diana, cleaning up after our lunch of enchiladas suizas con pollo (with chicken). My Spanish is, as they would say in Mexico if they were frank, no esta bien (not good). But, nonetheless, Diana and I were struggling through some broken conversation. She was very patient. I learned who cut her hair (Selene, a former orphan herself and now matron of Casa Hogar) and what she likes studying (fashion and clothes-making). I learn she likes singing along to the radio playing in the kitchen.

As we scrap tortillas and scrape beans, I notice that many of the dishes are cracked, chipped, warped. I notice that Diana is wearing a Montgomery County Parks and Recreation t-shirt. I continued to disgrace past Spanish teachers with my blown noun-verb agreement, my inability to speak about anything but the present (Joni Mitchell actually glorifies this inability in "Chelsea Morning" when she promises to "talk in present tenses." In the kindest light, my Spanish is a kind of force-marched "being in the moment" simply because I cannot formulate past or future. In more reality-based light, it is an abomination.) But, as Diana and I weave a conversation together with ques? (whats?) and entiendes? (you understands?), I begin to think about these dishes we are washing.

These are not like the dishes in my house. In the United States, many have the luxury of "making a statement" with what we buy, what we wear, where and what we eat, what we drive. We believe--even as I know it's not so--that what flatware we use, what china pattern we choose "says something" about us. We fret about buying the wrong kind of computer, driving the wrong kind of car. These are not the worries of the children at Casa Hogar. Their plastic bowls--scuffed as they may be--hold milk and cereal. Their cattle truck is sufficient to take them to and from church and school. Their clothes cover their bodies. Indeed, they were muy guapo (very handsome) and bonita (pretty) in church today. Their things are both enough and not enough in the same instant.

Their things don't say anything about these children. Not the way children's clothes speak in America. Not the way I have come to believe that my new glasses are "very me."

Wait.

What I just said--about things not speaking for these kids--is not entirely true. I want these kids to embody a richness of heart, to symbolize the indomitability of the human spirit. I want them to show us how, beyond essentials, all our striving is ego and fear. Maybe when I was (not much) younger, that's what these kids could have been, what they could have shown. But I know better. While things don't say everything, they do say something. And insofar as things speak for people, the hand-me-downs and leftovers, the chipped and scuffed, they speak loudly enough. They say simply, persistently, "These kids are poor." Their things speak and we must listen.

As a group, we are reading "Living Faith: How Faith Inspires Social Justice" by Curtiss DeYoung. It profiles social activists from around the world whose activism springs directly and inextricably from their faith. The first two chapters profile Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his "view from below." As a young German minister, Bonhoeffer traveled to the United States and spent time in the African-American faith community in New York City. Through his experiences there, he came to see not only the racism in America, but the corollary anti-Semitism in his native Germany. He came to understand, viscerally, the "view from below."

Bonhoeffer adopted "the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled--in short, [] the perspective of those who suffered." It is this empathy, this ability to see the world from multiple vantage points, from which Bonhoeffer's outrage and activism sprung. Without this understanding, Bonhoeffer is just another complicit German minister.

Being here, at the Casa Hogar, among kids who look up to me--literally--it occurs to me that children, always and forever, have a view from below.

Bonhoeffer understood kids' perspective, their standing as viewers from below, I think, when he offers this matrix for action: "The ultimate question, for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is to live. It is only from this question, with its responsibility towards history, that fruitful solutions can come, even if for the time being they are very humiliating."

Asking ourselves how the coming generation is to live requires an understanding of who the next generation is--all of them. This understanding must be real, flowing from friendship, shared experience, mutual respect, and compassion. Will those conversations be difficult? Hell yes. Will those relationships be time-consuming? You bet. Will they be inconvenient, require compromise, challenge us? All of the above. Do we have a choice? Not if we want to survive.

As Diana and I finish drying the dishes, a particularly catchy song crackles on the radio. Diana and another girl sing loudly, con gusto (with feeling). Interrupting, because that's what I do, I ask what the song is about.

"Tito y Bambino."

"Tito and Bambino are boyfriend girlfriend?" I ask in Spanish.

"No," Diana says, wondering why I am compulsively stupid. "Tito y Bambino are a rock group."

"Ah," and I try again, "But what is the topic of the song?"

"Ah, I understand," she says. "The song is about love."

Isn't it always?



Wait.

I think something big just happened.

Saturday! What a day.

This morning many of us arose to the giggles of curious children or the sniffing of equally curious dogs. This was preceded by the seemingly endless call of the roster to wake up. As we got ready for the day we were introduced to the children. We received countless hugs and a warm desire to be near each other.
Many of us gathered in the dining area to eat breakfast. As we did the children offered us stickers for our hands as decorations. The children even decorated the dogs with stickers. Never has there been a place filled with so much laughter and joy. These children lack nothing in the smiles department.
We ate breakfast at various tables with the children. Sharing what we could with the broken or absent Spanish. We got along pretty good. We gathered after the meal to discuss the specifics of our mission trip. Derek offered to us that this trip is more about relationships than it is about “doing” anything. That in Mexico it is more important to be with each other than it is to do business.
We will not be starting our “project” until Monday. So we filled our day with a trip into town and playing with the children. Some of us pushed children on swings or down slides. Some of us wrestled with the children, lifting them over our heads as they wiggled to mimic the stars of the WWF. Still others played board games, puzzles, and even a form of bingo. These children have boundless energy!
We will attend worship at a local church tomorrow. We are excited to worship with our Christian Sisters and Brothers here in San Luis Potosi. Thank you for praying with us as we venture forth into what God wills for us.
Blessings and peace…

We're here!

We arrived in San Luis Potosi around 11:00 p.m. local time. We were greeted with a chorus of exotic sounds. The most exotic being that of the airplane that we landed in. We were ushered towards customs and soon we were officially in Mexico!
We loaded our gear into two waiting vehicles. Two folks hopped into the back of a pick-up truck with Luis & Fernando [two of the children living at the home] and we motored on our way to Casa De Hogar. The darkness could not suppress the beauty of this city. We were entertained with the fluctuating scent of livestock and tacos. The lone beacons of light in the darkness were the ever ready tacos stands offered meals to the waiting truckers.
With the cool wind in our face we made way across the highway. Passing us to the left and right, people rode mopeds and large American trucks to home and what else the night shall bring. We stopped for a late dinner at “Los Volcanos” a popular late night taco stand. We ponied up to a few tables and broke bread.
On our way home the sky opened up and those brave souls in the back of the truck got soaked from head to toe. Luckily the luggage was safe from stormy weather. We arrived to a large iron gate and entered into the Casa ready to begin.
The most amazing part of the trip thus far is the diversity of hope and conviction we all bring to this mission. We hope to bring a good word from Douglass Blvd. Christian Church to our family here in Mexico. I would say so far so good.
We hope you follow us over the next few days as we seek to meet a loving, living God of abundance and transformation here in Mexico. I pray that our expectation of a divine encounter in the faces of these hopeful children bring new fruit to all of us.
Blessings and peace…