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Paul writes in II Corinthians 13:1 that “Any charge must be sustained by the evidence of two or three witnesses.” This principle of Jewish law—that there must be at least two witnesses in all criminal prosecutions—stretches back to Deuteronomy (see 17:6 and 19:15, among other verses). For me, this precedent Paul and Moses established for unhappy circumstances has been an aid for spiritual growth.
That is, I have found through the years that I do well to pay attention when “two witnesses” testify to me about spiritual things. When different voices speak to me at the same time about the same thing, I consider that God is “doubling” the lesson he is trying to teach me so that, dull as I often am, I might clearly see. Or begin to.
It has happened again in the last couple of weeks. One “witness” was something I read in a new book on congregational life by Gil Rendle, former senior consultant at the Alban Institute. The other was a blog entry by Will Willimon, bishop of the North Alabama Conference.
Dr. Rendle writes,
“One of my favorite bromides says, ‘If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything you see looks like a nail.’ Similarly, if the only available tool that leaders have is the basic problem-solving process that most of us employ, then the only way we can view (congregational) discomfort is as a problem. A critical challenge congregational leaders face is the need to preserve and protect the discomfort of differences among the people as an opportunity for learning rather than to seek quick solutions that will make winners comfortable and losers disappear.”
He goes on to suggest that a healthy congregation (which is not always a comfortable congregation) is one that 1) receives new members (who admittedly come in bringing with them new ideas and expectations); 2)passes on the faith from one generation to the other; and 3) is in earnest dialogue about what is important. He quotes Dorothy Bass: “When a tradition is ‘living,’ its members are engaged in a vibrant, embodied ‘argument,’ stretching across time and space, about what the fullest participation in its particular goods would entail.” Such ‘argument’ need not be acrimonious; indeed, it must be robust but kind, energized but respectful, truthful but loving.
So what does it mean to be a UM Christian in these days? How can we foster a four-fold mission of teaching/learning, fellowship, worship and prayer? In sum, how can we make healthy congregations so that we can offer a joyful and vibrant invitation, to existing and prospective members, to join together in the glad work of the gospel? How can we become excited again about our faith and faithfulness?
Some have suggested that, in my congregation, it might be hard to do all that—and hard especially to get people excited and joyful again. They say there is still too much distrust, much of it born of unpleasant conversations about unhappy topics. They say that for the last little while we have been kind of turned in on ourselves, occupied with some hurtful and in some cases disrupting matters. Many feelings have been hurt, I am told. Many hearts are still heavy. Some are trying to get over it but still find themselves struggling, going through he motions but still carrying too much weight from the past to face the future nimble and glad.
I am doing my best not to extinguish or ignore those very real feelings. I do not know how deep or widespread they are—as Dr. Rendle says, sometimes those kinds of feelings and the people who have them just disappear. I do not want that to happen here. What I do want to happen is this: that we all of us learn from them.
One of the particular geniuses of Jesus is that he was able to keep together people who had every reason to part company. Natural enemies and competitors together became disciples. Slow as they often were, they each and all realized that being with Jesus was reason enough to stay together. They still had arguments and disagreements, God knows. Jesus never did resolve all of their differences. But forced to live together as a spiritual family, they learned to get along even when their “stuff” collided.
With that already in mind I heard the second voice, received testimony from the second witness. Please take time to read this post:
http://www.northalabamaumc.org/bishop_column_detail.asp?TableName=oBishop_Sermons_Speeches_PWLDXP&PKValue=257.
I am wondering how we can keep everyone together, talking and learning from each other? I do not think I am focusing on negatives or anything like that; I am not trying to make too much of the “trouble;” instead I am suggesting that our hope for these days and the days to come have, as a part of its foundation, a commitment to listen and learn from each other. Dr. Rendle says, “When a system does not know what went wrong, it will determine who went wrong, and quickly.” Blame, one way or the other, is always easier than confession. Speaking is always easier than listening.
I am suggesting our in our place that we do as James counsels us, that we each be “quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.” That, as Hebrews commands, we “lay aside every weight and the sin which clings so closely, and run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus…”
I want us to look to Jesus, remembering that in spite of it all he has called us together, is working to keep us together here, to make us learn and grow in faith and hope and love. I hope we can have the kinds of healthy, if sometimes “uncomfortable” conversations, we might still need to have about what it means to be a part of our family of faith right now. I am suggesting we be open to receive each other’s different experiences and perceptions. I am not suggesting a forum; only that we all of us be alert, ready to listen, to learn, to converse, to confess, to forgive—so that we can help one another lay aside the weight, bear one another’s burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ. And thus find our joy!
Friday, October 23, 2009
Friday, October 09, 2009
RIP, John Wesley Winchester
2000-2009
Praying all dogs go to heaven, in the sure and certain hope that God loves what his children love.
Praying all dogs go to heaven, in the sure and certain hope that God loves what his children love.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
West-Flowing Praise
This is a piece of my sermon for World Communion Sunday. If you would like a full copy, leave me an email address in the comments and I will forward it to you.
Already this day, in all times zones east, Christians have gathered in humble thanks, in genuine praise for the grace that is ours as evidenced in this meal.
Even now, right this very moment, all around us in Shelby and Cleveland County, in the Gastonia District and the Western North Carolina Conference, in the North Carolina Conference and the Southeast Jurisidiction—and that’s just United Methodists—all sorts of churches, all up and down the entire Eastern Seaboard, from the Atlantic to the Appalachians; in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec; in the Caribbean and South America, in Brazil—in Rio de Janeiro, too: happy as they are about the coming Olympics, there is greater, more lasting praise yet, for the wonder of God’s grace as evidenced, as experienced and expressed, in bread and cup on this World Communion Sunday.
Soon, now, we will hand off the unending hymn to those west of us, and they to those west of them, and again and again till it comes back round to us again, where in monasteries and convents, in closets and in school rooms, in hospital rooms and funeral homes, in traffic jams and every other place imaginable people will pray. People will worship.
Indeed, there is a worldwide communion of faith and worship and prayer every day—but tell the truth: some days our own world seems so small. If we are honest we will confess that our sphere of concerns is so insular, our awareness so narrow, and we can imagine that we believe or pray alone, that it’s “me and Jesus,” you know?
Thank God for a day like today when we gather around the Table and purpose to remember that it’s “we and Jesus,” that we are joined with and joined to Christians the world over. That together we offer one unbroken, unending hymn of praise, in different rhythms and keys, in various verses and chorus, in stanzas and descants—praise for creation, for recreation, for Christ, for the grace and unity we know most and best here at this Table.
Have you watched any of Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan’s new documentary, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea?
In one of the episodes there is a quote from a Robert Frost poem, entitled West-Running Brook:
'What does it think it’s doing running west
When all the other country brooks flow east
To reach the ocean? It must be the brook
Can trust itself to go by contraries…'
What a great line: 'it must trust itself to go by contraries…'
The Communion Table is a contrary: it disagrees with the unsettled world. It disagrees with the enmity and division by which we often organize our living and thinking. It runs against the currents of hatred and exclusion, of class and color. It flows opposite our narrow concerns and in that way carries us into the great wide ocean of God’s mercy and grace. Like our praise it runs west, cutting a path through ancient sediments of animosity, crystalline deposits of indifference.
Frost’s poem continues:
'It must be that the brook can trust itself to go by contraries,
The way I can with you -- and you with me --
Because we're -- we're -- I don't know what we are.
What are we?'
Young or new?'
We must be something.'
Indeed we are something—and what we are is the church. Here at the Table we ourselves, you and I, like Frost’s West Running Brook, trust ourselves to go by contraries… and thereby find unity in the Table.
Unity in the Body of Christ. A table set for us in the wilderness, till al the wilderness shall become the Promised Land at last.
Already this day, in all times zones east, Christians have gathered in humble thanks, in genuine praise for the grace that is ours as evidenced in this meal.
Even now, right this very moment, all around us in Shelby and Cleveland County, in the Gastonia District and the Western North Carolina Conference, in the North Carolina Conference and the Southeast Jurisidiction—and that’s just United Methodists—all sorts of churches, all up and down the entire Eastern Seaboard, from the Atlantic to the Appalachians; in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec; in the Caribbean and South America, in Brazil—in Rio de Janeiro, too: happy as they are about the coming Olympics, there is greater, more lasting praise yet, for the wonder of God’s grace as evidenced, as experienced and expressed, in bread and cup on this World Communion Sunday.
Soon, now, we will hand off the unending hymn to those west of us, and they to those west of them, and again and again till it comes back round to us again, where in monasteries and convents, in closets and in school rooms, in hospital rooms and funeral homes, in traffic jams and every other place imaginable people will pray. People will worship.
Indeed, there is a worldwide communion of faith and worship and prayer every day—but tell the truth: some days our own world seems so small. If we are honest we will confess that our sphere of concerns is so insular, our awareness so narrow, and we can imagine that we believe or pray alone, that it’s “me and Jesus,” you know?
Thank God for a day like today when we gather around the Table and purpose to remember that it’s “we and Jesus,” that we are joined with and joined to Christians the world over. That together we offer one unbroken, unending hymn of praise, in different rhythms and keys, in various verses and chorus, in stanzas and descants—praise for creation, for recreation, for Christ, for the grace and unity we know most and best here at this Table.
Have you watched any of Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan’s new documentary, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea?
In one of the episodes there is a quote from a Robert Frost poem, entitled West-Running Brook:
'What does it think it’s doing running west
When all the other country brooks flow east
To reach the ocean? It must be the brook
Can trust itself to go by contraries…'
What a great line: 'it must trust itself to go by contraries…'
The Communion Table is a contrary: it disagrees with the unsettled world. It disagrees with the enmity and division by which we often organize our living and thinking. It runs against the currents of hatred and exclusion, of class and color. It flows opposite our narrow concerns and in that way carries us into the great wide ocean of God’s mercy and grace. Like our praise it runs west, cutting a path through ancient sediments of animosity, crystalline deposits of indifference.
Frost’s poem continues:
'It must be that the brook can trust itself to go by contraries,
The way I can with you -- and you with me --
Because we're -- we're -- I don't know what we are.
What are we?'
Young or new?'
We must be something.'
Indeed we are something—and what we are is the church. Here at the Table we ourselves, you and I, like Frost’s West Running Brook, trust ourselves to go by contraries… and thereby find unity in the Table.
Unity in the Body of Christ. A table set for us in the wilderness, till al the wilderness shall become the Promised Land at last.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Times Takes on Prayer
Please go to www.theolog.org and read my new post there. Steve Thorngate, theolog's editor, asked me to weigh-on on an article in The New York Times Magazine by Zeb Chafets on prayer. Be interested to know what you think.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Prayers and Preachers
It was something of a schizophrenic experience, these last couple of days. I was at St. Mary's Retreat Center in Sewannee, TN, a large meeting place on the grounds of the Convent of the Community of St. Mary, one of the ten remaining convents of Episcopal nuns in the United States.
There are eight nuns left at St. Mary's, and four of them recent transplants--the last remnants of an Episcopal convent and order, the Episcopal Sisters of Charity, which had known the West Virginia mountains as home. Each morning at seven they gather for Mass, at noon for prayer, at five for Evening Plainsong and at seven for Compline. It is sad, in a way, to see these women, all of them older and two of them much older, gathering in a small semi-circle around the Altar to pray, and especially because there no novices among them or any on the horizon. In another way it is thrilling, and humbling, to know that these have given themselves to this place, this life, this prayer and particular service.
The convent chapel is lovely if small, and worshipers look out over the Altar to see the bluff and valleys of the Tennessee hills. On the two mornings I was there I was invited to share Holy Eucharist and breakfast. The hospitality of the Host is also evidenced in these hostesses. Monday was the feast of St. Matthew the Evangelist. Tuesday was the lesser feast of Philander Chase. I had never heard of the latter, but will never forget, I think, that he was the fifteenth of fifteen children, a missionary to the Oneida and Mohawk and, later, an Episcopal bishop.
There is a small cemetery near the entrance to the retreat center, where the dead far outnumber the convent's quick, and I could not help but think that those who come here to live know they have come here also to die, that each of them will lie in that very and very sacred place when the last breath they any of them have for prayer will have passed their lips and wafted like incense toward heaven. Nuns, convents, part-time prayers like me may come adn go, but prayer remains for ever, and the life of prayer will finally claim us all.
I found myself at St. Mary's not only for prayer, however. I was also on hand for a kind of homiletical retreat with eight Baptist pastors, all of them men, from Nashville. They had come to consider their Advent preaching, most of them still struggling to make sense of the lectionary, the worth and rhythm of the Christian year, or if not that, exactly, then at least how to preach the lectionary in their Baptist congregations back home. At the invitation of my old Greek teacher, in the company of a couple of old friends, I was there as a resource for their discussion--God help them and me--but the irony was delicious. I was moving back and forth between two worlds I have inhabited for parts of my life, two ways of thinking and believing that I understand only a little, and both of them my heritage in a way (I was raised Baptist; I am now Methodist, heir to the English reformation).
I have never felt completely at ease nor yet completely un-home in either. I fumble through the Book of Common Prayer (and, more regularly and nearer to home, the Benedictine liturgies at Belmont Abbey) and stumble at the often-unintended parochialism of Baptist life. I love preaching revivals and shudder at the often uncritical veneration of Mary.
It is the story of my life, this narrative of being between ports, and sometimes in a storm. This week there was no storm, only lots of rain, but these last two days I sailed back and forth, trekked as it were back and forth from cathedral to camp meeting, from the Sacrament of bread and wine to the distinctly southern sacramental of preaching.
My friend Bill has been pastor of his semi-rural Baptist congregation for 27 years, more than half his life. How monastic is that? I have been in my current appointment for three months; how itinerant is that?
The word of God, and the challenge of preaching it; the prayers of the people, and the challenge of perpetuating it; the giving of oneself to the life of prayer and the life of proclamation...they are the same challenge, I guess, so whether man or woman, young or old, Episcopalian or Baptist (or even Methodist), living or dead, Christ is and will be all in all, the once and final integration we need for all our various multiple personalities and professions.
There are eight nuns left at St. Mary's, and four of them recent transplants--the last remnants of an Episcopal convent and order, the Episcopal Sisters of Charity, which had known the West Virginia mountains as home. Each morning at seven they gather for Mass, at noon for prayer, at five for Evening Plainsong and at seven for Compline. It is sad, in a way, to see these women, all of them older and two of them much older, gathering in a small semi-circle around the Altar to pray, and especially because there no novices among them or any on the horizon. In another way it is thrilling, and humbling, to know that these have given themselves to this place, this life, this prayer and particular service.
The convent chapel is lovely if small, and worshipers look out over the Altar to see the bluff and valleys of the Tennessee hills. On the two mornings I was there I was invited to share Holy Eucharist and breakfast. The hospitality of the Host is also evidenced in these hostesses. Monday was the feast of St. Matthew the Evangelist. Tuesday was the lesser feast of Philander Chase. I had never heard of the latter, but will never forget, I think, that he was the fifteenth of fifteen children, a missionary to the Oneida and Mohawk and, later, an Episcopal bishop.
There is a small cemetery near the entrance to the retreat center, where the dead far outnumber the convent's quick, and I could not help but think that those who come here to live know they have come here also to die, that each of them will lie in that very and very sacred place when the last breath they any of them have for prayer will have passed their lips and wafted like incense toward heaven. Nuns, convents, part-time prayers like me may come adn go, but prayer remains for ever, and the life of prayer will finally claim us all.
I found myself at St. Mary's not only for prayer, however. I was also on hand for a kind of homiletical retreat with eight Baptist pastors, all of them men, from Nashville. They had come to consider their Advent preaching, most of them still struggling to make sense of the lectionary, the worth and rhythm of the Christian year, or if not that, exactly, then at least how to preach the lectionary in their Baptist congregations back home. At the invitation of my old Greek teacher, in the company of a couple of old friends, I was there as a resource for their discussion--God help them and me--but the irony was delicious. I was moving back and forth between two worlds I have inhabited for parts of my life, two ways of thinking and believing that I understand only a little, and both of them my heritage in a way (I was raised Baptist; I am now Methodist, heir to the English reformation).
I have never felt completely at ease nor yet completely un-home in either. I fumble through the Book of Common Prayer (and, more regularly and nearer to home, the Benedictine liturgies at Belmont Abbey) and stumble at the often-unintended parochialism of Baptist life. I love preaching revivals and shudder at the often uncritical veneration of Mary.
It is the story of my life, this narrative of being between ports, and sometimes in a storm. This week there was no storm, only lots of rain, but these last two days I sailed back and forth, trekked as it were back and forth from cathedral to camp meeting, from the Sacrament of bread and wine to the distinctly southern sacramental of preaching.
My friend Bill has been pastor of his semi-rural Baptist congregation for 27 years, more than half his life. How monastic is that? I have been in my current appointment for three months; how itinerant is that?
The word of God, and the challenge of preaching it; the prayers of the people, and the challenge of perpetuating it; the giving of oneself to the life of prayer and the life of proclamation...they are the same challenge, I guess, so whether man or woman, young or old, Episcopalian or Baptist (or even Methodist), living or dead, Christ is and will be all in all, the once and final integration we need for all our various multiple personalities and professions.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Revival on The Way Home from Revival
I have been pondering something I heard on Wednesday night as I returned from preaching the last of four revival sermons at Maggie Valley UMC. I was, as I often do, scanning my radio dial listening for a) oldies rock and roll--the kind I used to play years in ago in a handful of garage bands; or b) a good radio preacher. The former is easier to find than the latter, to be sure, and some of the preaching that you can find is, shall we say (and especially in view of the balance of this email), less than wonderfully edifying.
Anyway, I stumbled by grace onto a station carrying a preacher by name of Alistair Begg, of whom I had never heard, from Parkway Church near Cleveland, with which I am unfamiliar. In a beautiful Scottish brogue (he came to the US with his family in 1983 to serve the Parkway church), he was teaching/preaching on The Epistle of James. To conclude the sermon he quoted an Episcopal priest of the 19th century, Charles Simeon, who is considered by many to be the father of the evangelical movement in England (Wesleyans might disagree!). The link to the sermon in its entirety is below.
What I most want to share, though, is the quote from Simeon--for it has occupied much of my thinking yesterday and today. It is rather stately, typical of British prose, and you may have to chew on it a bit (especially number 3, which I think I heard correctly), but the truth is simple enough: that slander, what I have called "bad gossip," is a sin the Bible takes very seriously. The sin proceeds from the "vain imagination" by which we presume to have knowledge enough and right to judge another's actions or motives. Anyway, according to Mr. Begg, Simeon was writing to a colleague in the ministry when he penned these words:
"The longer I live the more I feel the importance of adhering to the rules which I have laid-out for myself, which are as follows: 1) To hear as little as possible what is to the prejudice of others; 2) To believe nothing of the kind until absolutely forced to; 3) Never to drink into the spirit of one to circulate an ill report; 4) Always to moderate as far as I can the unkindness which is expressed towards others; and 5) Always to believe, that if the other side were heard, a very different account would be given of the matter."
Mr. Begg concluded by saying that Charles Simeon often said to his friends, "Let us sit upon the seat of love instead of the seat of judgment."
I find those "rules" fit not just for an English divine, but meet and right for me, too, day to day. If I can adopt such a posture in all my conversations, it will be evidence of the Peace of Christ--both in and through me. Which is to say, Christ, the Prince of Peace, has given us his Peace, that we ourselves might be peacemakers.
http://apps.truthforlife.org/tfl-pop-up.php?mp3=September-16-2009Broadcast.mp3&title=Only+One+Judge&series=Faith+That+Works%2C+Vol.+3&image=14188.jpg&buy_single=https%3A%2F%2Fstore.truthforlife.org%2Findex.php%3Fmain_page%3Dproduct_music_info%26model_no%3D2594DL&buy_series=https%3A%2F%2Fstore.truthforlife.org%2Findex.php%3Fmain_page%3Dproduct_music_info%26model_no%3D15903CD
Anyway, I stumbled by grace onto a station carrying a preacher by name of Alistair Begg, of whom I had never heard, from Parkway Church near Cleveland, with which I am unfamiliar. In a beautiful Scottish brogue (he came to the US with his family in 1983 to serve the Parkway church), he was teaching/preaching on The Epistle of James. To conclude the sermon he quoted an Episcopal priest of the 19th century, Charles Simeon, who is considered by many to be the father of the evangelical movement in England (Wesleyans might disagree!). The link to the sermon in its entirety is below.
What I most want to share, though, is the quote from Simeon--for it has occupied much of my thinking yesterday and today. It is rather stately, typical of British prose, and you may have to chew on it a bit (especially number 3, which I think I heard correctly), but the truth is simple enough: that slander, what I have called "bad gossip," is a sin the Bible takes very seriously. The sin proceeds from the "vain imagination" by which we presume to have knowledge enough and right to judge another's actions or motives. Anyway, according to Mr. Begg, Simeon was writing to a colleague in the ministry when he penned these words:
"The longer I live the more I feel the importance of adhering to the rules which I have laid-out for myself, which are as follows: 1) To hear as little as possible what is to the prejudice of others; 2) To believe nothing of the kind until absolutely forced to; 3) Never to drink into the spirit of one to circulate an ill report; 4) Always to moderate as far as I can the unkindness which is expressed towards others; and 5) Always to believe, that if the other side were heard, a very different account would be given of the matter."
Mr. Begg concluded by saying that Charles Simeon often said to his friends, "Let us sit upon the seat of love instead of the seat of judgment."
I find those "rules" fit not just for an English divine, but meet and right for me, too, day to day. If I can adopt such a posture in all my conversations, it will be evidence of the Peace of Christ--both in and through me. Which is to say, Christ, the Prince of Peace, has given us his Peace, that we ourselves might be peacemakers.
http://apps.truthforlife.org/tfl-pop-up.php?mp3=September-16-2009Broadcast.mp3&title=Only+One+Judge&series=Faith+That+Works%2C+Vol.+3&image=14188.jpg&buy_single=https%3A%2F%2Fstore.truthforlife.org%2Findex.php%3Fmain_page%3Dproduct_music_info%26model_no%3D2594DL&buy_series=https%3A%2F%2Fstore.truthforlife.org%2Findex.php%3Fmain_page%3Dproduct_music_info%26model_no%3D15903CD
Thursday, September 03, 2009
New Post on Theolog
I have written a new piece for www.theolog.org, reflections on the funeral Mass for Edward Kennedy. I hope you will check it out.
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