Taking attendance

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, evil has been lurking close to home for me and mine. So much so that some family members have questioned the existence of God or at the very least, have noted God’s absence.

Now, in instances like that, I suppose I could toss out some quasi-pastoral line about not seeing footprints in the sand because God is carrying you or some such noise, but I don’t find that comforting myself, nor do I believe it. So, what can I say when I’m hearing about an AWOL God? How ‘bout the truth? What I responded to one family member was, “Oh, yeah. That. God hasn’t really been present for me in years.” So, the follow-up question I received was, “Um, where are you driving home from tonight?” Yeah. The seminary. See, that’s a little secret you don’t often hear. Lots of us “God-types” aren’t exactly tight with God.

The most notable example of this living-in-God’s-absence-and-soldiering-on type of minister is Mother Teresa. A batch of letters came out after her death that chronicled a span of more than four decades in which she just wasn’t feeling it. Yet, every day she’d get up, put on her clothes and get out there doing her job. Isn’t that what we all do? Okay, most of us aren’t exactly drumming up dough to feed, clothe and educate gobs of hungry orphans. But we still do our own acts of heroism every day, attending to the needs of family and friends in their times of suffering, making cookies for a bake sale to benefit a neighbor or school, letting someone merge onto the highway from the on ramp. Acts of kindness. It’s what we do. It’s our way of bringing humanity into an often cruel and inhumane world.

The God thing? Well, that’s a leap of faith.

Faith, hope and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.*

St. Augustine argued that love was the most important of the big three, ‘cause the Bible sez so. I disagree. Sure, love’s great. But, I think most of us have a handle on love. We get it. What’s harder for us everyday schmucks is having faith in an absent God when those we love are hurt. It’s also having faith that maybe God’s absence is a clue that we really do need to rely on each other to carry forth the work of God and feel God’s work being acted out on our behalf by others. So what is this work? It’s the work of stewarding and caring for our planet and the creation that resides within it – whales, dogs, cats, turtles, redwood trees, tulips, ferns, polar bears and humans. We do it out of love; we do it as an act of faith.

*That’s my top of mind recollection of 1 Corinthians 13 for those keeping track at home. Most folks recognize it from about a zillion weddings they’ve attended.

What makes me crankier than Twins losing? God bless America

Yes, you've heard it here first. I'm a commie pinko, un-American freak. Almost 48 hours later and what makes me crabbier than the Twins losing Sunday's game was the "requirement" we all stand in the 7th inning and listen to some way overdressed chick sing "God Bless America." WTF???

Needless to say, I practiced my First Amendment right to not stand and to not have some sense of phony reverence for a cheesy song made popular by yet another overdressed chick back when my mother was still in diapers (and it was an old, dusty tune then).

That's not to say I don't pray for my country. I do. Fervently. A lot. Do I need to somehow prove my American-ness in the company of 50,000 beer drinking, baseball-watching fans? Heck no. While I'm not opposed to a song that asks the almighty for guidance, I am opposed to and offended by the forced patriotism that resides behind the action being done in a public venue like a major league baseball game. In a post-9/11 world, I completely agree our nation needs guidance. I just question the motivation behind and appropriateness of the action, not to mention it's a pretty dumb tune.

That's not to say that I didn't spring to my feet when "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" was sung. Now that's a bit of group think I can live with. Right motivation. Right venue.

The question of evil

Unwittingly, I have looked evil in the face and survived, although the swath of destruction in the wake of what's unfolded will run deep and wide for years to come. It's cases of bad, indeed truly horrible, things happening to good and innocent people that solidify my thoughts on intercessory prayer. If God were truly hanging out just waiting to jump on the scene, if only enough people were to pray about it, that puts a lot of power on individuals and shows a lack of faith in God. (These folks seem to think God doesn't know God's business without a little micro-managing from humanity.) Not only that, but if God were to be following marching orders dictated by us humans, there would be a lot of folks who would suddenly go up in puffs of smoke because God would be pulling double shifts in the smiting business. But, I guess when humanity has lost faith in itself, it needs to turn somewhere. I'm just not convinced this placing of human desires on the human construct of God is healthy for anyone.

Thank God for dogs!

While most of my posts are seminary-related, this one's a bit of a stretch. I guess it is in the roundabout sense that Bob and I have always embraced stewardship of creation as a shared value.



What could celebrate the gift of creation and stewardship more than a totally gratuitous video I just created with some software I found on my computer? (And irritatingly, it won't post on Facebook; I think FB hates the Allman Brothers.) Being caregivers for abandoned doggies in need of medical attention seems like a pretty good way to make the most of creation.



Call this my holiday sermon and moment of thanksgiving...

I think it's no coincidence that God and Dog share the same letters. Dogs make terrific preachers and praise-singers.

Thing-a-ma-jew? Really???

It's been yet another event-filled week, once again culminated by bizarre, homicidal vehicles on interstate highways. After our most recent brush with death, complete with failed brakes, flaming engines and merging semi-trucks in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Bob and I decided "what the hell?" we'd go to church on Sunday morning. While we weren't expecting any conversion experiences, a la The Blues Brothers, we were mildly surprised at how the service went...and it wasn't like this.




You could say we did see the light, or that it was an enlightening experience, but only in that it reinforced why it is that I'm still less than enamored with Christianity, even though I'm about 1/6 of the way through seminary with the ultimate goal of being ordained. I know I write entirely too many LONG posts, so I'll give you the truncated version and let you fill in the blanks.

A minister's "Don't list" of how to conduct Sunday service

• Don't meander in during the gathering time whistling an entirely different tune than the organist is playing...better still, don't whistle at all.
• Don't spend the first 10 minutes of what's supposed to be worship telling personal stories that are only loosely related, in that they all have to do with you.
• Don't humiliate your children in front of the congregation by airing your dirty laundry.
• Don't think that bullying the local police, breaking down a door, threatening a group of teenagers in the name of "rescuing" a child who is hanging out drinking a couple of beers is acceptable.
• Don't confuse patriotism with Christianity. God's got the whole world to pay attention to. What makes you think that God should play favorites, or if God does, that our country would be it?
• Don't act proud when you tell the congregation you "didn't come from monkeys" -- it's offensive to the monkeys that you try to associate yourself with them at all.
• Don't forget that the God that we worship is the one who originated from the Jews. By demeaning them, you spit in the face of the one you believe is your creator.
• Don't have at least 7 times more mentions of yourself than you do of God, or even of "The Kid" -- it's just plain tacky.
• Don't, for the love of God, DON'T ever, EVER use the phrase Thing-A-Ma-Jew. Ever.

These really shouldn't be too difficult to follow, especially the last one. Really.

Mama knows best: A sermon on Numbers 11 and Johnny Cash

Mama knows best
The book of Numbers did strange things during my sleep state. I’m not generally one to have dreams, much less vivid ones, but I’ve had very striking dreams related to Numbers 11. One dream is somewhat easier, in that at least it seems connected – I dreamt of the vast numbers of quail that seemingly dropped from the sky and made up an ocean of food within the desert. I was struck with the juxtaposition of the image of vast abundance in a land of scarcity.

Then there’s a less-easy-to-connect dream. This one is a little more puzzling. It follows the story line of the Johnny Cash tune “Five Feet High and Rising.” I cannot make this up. Sometimes dreams are just weird. In short, the song is loosely based on Cash’s childhood experience with a flood great enough that his family had to flee to safety from their rural Arkansas home. So with these images in my head, I’ll try to walk you through what’s happening in Numbers 11, but more importantly, given the bad rap the Older Testament tends to get in modern day progressive Christian congregations, we’ll work toward making this old, but important text relevant here and now.

First, what’s up with Johnny Cash and how does it compare to Numbers 11?

• "Five Feet High" is set in a flood. Well, okay, as I said before and was highlighted in my other dream, I guess you could say there was a flood in Numbers, too...a flood of quail – at the very least, there was an abundance in a land of scarcity.
• Johnny's song has chickens sleeping in willow trees, hives under water, cows with water up to their knees, railroad tracks washed out. In short, things aren’t as they should be. Not unlike today’s reading. Rather than the assembly preparing to move ahead, the people of Israel find themselves stuck in the muck of discontent.
• Cash's song is about a family journey. The family starts out to evacuate by train, the tracks are washed out, and they seek the refuge of higher ground. Both the biblical text and the song are about family dynamics, one figuratively, the other in a more literal sense. That’s where I was getting stuck. "How high are the quail mama?" just doesn't have the same ring. Or does it? We’ll get back to that in a little bit. First, let’s take a closer look at the reading.

Contrary to what is sometimes noted about this text, the people of Israel haven’t been wandering the wilderness for years, eating three squares of manna. It’s been a matter of months at best, and this immediately after we read a long (and admittedly somewhat boring) catalog of sacrifices. Sacrifices aren’t about killing animals; they’re an opportunity for the assembly to commune with each other. Through these sacrifices, the people would have had the opportunity to partake in a little meat. Given the typical fare of the times, they had already had what would have been a substantial dose of protein. Yet, the people wanted more. More.

What more could the people want? They have a God who has taken care to provide not just a food that drops from the heavens on a daily basis, but also a sufficient water source to give the people not just enough to drink, but also to use to boil the manna to make it a more palatable, cake-like substance. Given the circumstances of being out in the wilderness, these people have it made: food, water, and most importantly, they have God on their advance team.

Yet, they grumble. The manna’s boring. There’s no excitement with manna. It’s just…there. Every day it’s there for the people. Every day. It’s there for the people. Its presence is as predictable as God’s. And some of the people reject the manna. It’s not hard to make the leap between the rejection of the God-given source for continued life in the wilderness and the rejection of God. A yearning for something more, for something exciting, has clouded the people’s vision to the point where they have forgotten about who led them to freedom. Their God is angered. Moses is angered. The people are angered. Small wonder nothing good comes from this situation, or does it?

In the middle of this story of discontent: the people’s with the food, God’s with the people, Moses’ with, arguably, both parties – the people for their complaints, and God for placing Moses in this situation to begin with, we hear of a gathering of people to help Moses out. We hear of an administrative task force that, at least for a moment, receives a flash of inspiration. Some of the spirit of Moses is lifted from him and it settles on the assembly he’s gathered. While the spirit is fleeting (not unlike us today – we don’t have a full-voltage blast of the spirit every moment of our lives), their ability to do the work of the people continues.

Also, not unlike today, if the spirit of God wishes to reach you, there’s no hiding place. The two who remained in camp during this initial administrative assembly, are visited from the spirit of God and prophesy to the people there. This is not unlike the many ministries your own congregation takes part in. They aren’t tied in to a government agency, but they’re ad hoc and manage to further your community’s cause of justice and caring for all. The interesting thing about these two is that unlike the assembly with Moses, it’s not indicated that these two, Eldad and Medad, stop prophesying. In fact, you could say that the charge that was sparked within them continues through to people within our own pews. Maybe, most likely, it’s you. Don’t believe me? You’re here, aren’t you?

This would be a nice place to end, this team of Moses’ helpers, but we have an unresolved and somewhat troubling piece: we still have the hungry (or at least desiring) people and God’s promise to give them what they ask for. At first it appears the people’s cries have been answered. A wind carries a massive flock of quail (likely on a migratory path, perhaps on what we’d now know of as the jet stream) over the camp. Suddenly the quail fall from the sky. The word for wind and spirit are the same in this passage. It’s as if the spirit-wind has momentarily exited the vicinity, causing the travel-weary birds who were using its force to stay airborne to fall from the sky … at the same time, some within the camp lose their spiritual grounding.

The people don’t seem to see the importance that this food source is delivered outside of their community. The people have abandoned God’s designated community prior to this passage by their rejection of God’s food. Now they are abandoning God in a more literal sense. They are leaving the community to gather the objects of their desire. In one way or another, at some time, each of us has perused our own quail and abandoned our communities. Fortunately, we are afforded the opportunity to change. We can return from our travels outside of camp in pursuit of the almighty buck (I mean quail) and rejoin the community. Again, isn’t that why we’re here today?

While this is where the biblical text for today ends, you’re probably wondering what happened to the Cash family. Remember, when we left them, they were in a state of disorder? The waters were rising; the chickens were in the trees. The family tries to leave by train and the rails are washed out. They’re in dire straits. Left with no alternative, the Cash family is left to wander the wilderness (or at least move to higher ground farther from home) in their flee to safety.
For the Cash family, the path isn't clear where they are to go, but they know they cannot remain where they are. The people of Israel keep getting pulled in new directions at Yahweh's instruction. The only clear message both “tribes” seem to have is that they cannot remain where they are, at least not for long. There is no sense of permanence for the people of Israel, nor for our modern day exiles.

There’s another similarity between the two stories that wasn’t obvious at first: within each story is a strong leader and a strong reliance on that leader’s relationship with God. In Numbers, even after the installation of 70 assistants, it’s clear Moses is still the CEO. For the Cash family, it’s mama. Both leaders use their faith and close relationship with God to guide their moves and lead their families to safety.

Both the song and this chapter of Numbers ends in a spot that leaves the listener thinking nothing good could possibly come out of this situation. And if we look at this moment in time, there’s no getting around the dismal finishes. There’s no upbeat sounding of the trumpets, no snappy guitar solo. They just end with a crowd of misguided people dying in the wilderness in Numbers and a family who is left homeless and wandering the country thanks to an “act of God.”

But, the story does not end with this chapter. Moses eventually does lead the people to a new land (although he doesn’t enter it himself). Mama, who observed in the middle of the chaos at the Cash farm "looks like we'll be blessed with a little more rain," does get her family to safety; but there’s more to mama’s faith. Here’s the back story to “Five Feet High and Rising.” Mama was right. What seemed disastrous at the time for the Cash family had an upside. As the musician later recalled, “We couldn’t see much good in the flood waters when they were causing us to have to leave home, but when the water went down, we found that it had washed a load of rich black bottom dirt across our land. The following year we had the best cotton crop we’d ever had.”[1]

In our faith community, we’re all exiles – each of us has our own personal wilderness story. Like the community of Israel, we can journey together, in relationship with God. Like the Cash family, we can gain from the richness that washes in from the tumult of our personal brushes with God. Together, we can reap a stronger harvest. We just need to be prepared that the journey isn’t quite going to be what any of us anticipate, and we may arrive at an unexpected place, God willing. While the end result of both stories is important, it’s not hard to see that the journey itself in the company of God is what binds them together. And now it’s our turn. Our journey together continues to enrich us and bind us. It continues to reinforce our relationship with God. It continues to remind us of the importance of our greater family.

[1] http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/j/johnny_cash/five_feet_high_and_rising.html

It would be long, but...

If anyone's interested in reading the sermon I came up with based on Numbers 11 and the Johnny Cash tune, let me know. (A couple of folks have commented on it in other avenues this week-thanks for the words of encouragement. I decided to run with it and see what happened.) I'm not sure if there's a word count on this thing, and there doesn't appear to be a place to attach a Word doc, but I'll figure it out. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read my earlier post.