Jesus Thoughts

On Monday I was tooling around Best Buy, enjoying a second-rate worship experience with lots of plastic false gods. (I do like the prelude music they play. Just lovely.) It was Labor Day; the place was packed. I strolled over to the cell phone section, just for kicks, only to stumble upon a first-rate consumer smack down. Two women, arms full of smartphone accessories, one of them supported by her mother, were in a battle royal for a spot in the protracted line. A crowd had formed around them, like inmates watching a prison yard scuffle. The yelling was shrill. “You got out of line!” “We were here first!” “You only care about yourself!” “You are a horrible person!” And on and on it went. I felt for the wiry 20-something BB employee, dressed in bright blue and deep distress.

Pittsburgh’s own Andy Warhol once quipped, “Buying is much more American than thinking, and I'm as American as they come.” He might be on to something. I confess I’d much rather stroll around the brightly lit aisles of an electronic wonderland, struggling with this size flatscreen or that, than think about who exactly is my neighbor and how can I love them. Bring on the gadgets!

But as I watched my Best Buy neighbors throw down over a coveted place in the cell phone queue, I thought to myself: “On balance, I think I’m grateful to be baptized, and grateful for the crisis the gospel of Jesus usually prompts in my otherwise mundane life. Not that I’m any better than these three in the brawl. (I'm thinking: Hey, while they are distracted, you could jump in line!) But I do give thanks for gospel commands that call me to love, gospel freedom that makes that possible, and gospel thinking on why it even matters.

What Jesus-thoughts are you thinking this week?
Where is the Holy Spirit calling you, above the consumerist fray?

Listen to Him

A meditation on Mark 9:2-10

I promise you this, Jesus
You give me a shot up on that mountain
Up there with you
In the bleach and the dazzle
In the company of dudes as cool as
fire-calling Elijah
and
water-parting Moses
You give me a shot up there
And I won’t screw it up, like Peter did.

...

Actually, that’s not true.

I probably will. Probably have.
Poor Peter. What a chump.
Poor me. What a mug.

The things we say when we are piously petrified.

...

But I know this
Mountain climbing Jesus, Matterhorn Messiah
After six days in this tired, twisted world of yours (well, almost yours)
I want to be up on that mountain.
I want to be apart from the tempestuous world below
With you
With the Father
With at least my foot in the door of what you Two Friends (and Another) share.

Not that your sanctuary up there at 1 Transfiguration Place
Is any less dangerous than the Youngstown nightly news
(that's the only news I get on my antenna)
Danger down here! That much is clear.
But it's all danger-danger up there, too!

What, with your
Shimmering new suit
Blinding with the gleam of a 1000 suns
A disco ball of divinity
Spotting everything
Exposing all

And that terrible cloud of knowing
That dreadful veil of the Godhead
Overshadowing
Overcoming
With that penetrating voice that fracks the shale of all our falsehood.

So there’s no safe place, after all
In the back alley or in the back pew.


But at least your danger rings true.
At least in your blinding light there is life.
At least
up there
with you
one can hear the brassy confirmation of the Father
that fundamental word we nightly-news-orphans ache to hear

Beloved!

...

Speaking of ache
I dread the climb up there.
I'm out of shape.
(too many cheeseburgers)

But I need the view!
Let me go with you, Jesus.
Just once.

Actually, how about every 7 days?
Once a month?
Quarterly?!

I want to see what you see
I want to see this broken-down world
And its tiresome schemes
And your impotent church
And my fickle life
I want to see all of it
Washed over in a dazzling white.

Not Caucasian, mind you.
(Please. I get enough of that in the mirror, 6 days a week)

No, I mean that unpigmented goodness
that seeps out of God’s space.

I want to see what this world, your world, looks like
Bleached of its sad stink
Blanched of its greyish, mournful hue

When I was a kid my older cousin Tommy told me
that if I stared directly into the sun my pupils would catch on fire.

I tell you this much, Jesus
When it comes to your son-face
I’d sure like to try.
Burn off all the religious gas
Melt away my stubborn dross

Because the truth is
I’m as much of a lummox as the apostle Petra
Old Peter, the rock.
His head may as well been made of stone
Always opening his mouth at the wrong time.

And me too
I’m always trying to speak to you
Always wanting to explain reality to you

That’s why I need you to take me up on the mountain
Take me up above myself
Sit me down
And tell me, in effect
To shut up
(Gently, of course ⎯ as I know you can do)

Just for a moment ...

A silent church.
No tired hymns.
No ubiquitous praise songs.
No needy, all-knowing preachers. (Thank the Lord!)
No polls or papers or opinions.

Teach us to stay silent in the stupefying cloud of your all-knowing.

Take me up with you, Jesus
Take us all
Up into your shared life
With the Father
And the Spirit

Let us eavesdrop on that endless song you sing together
Give us a peek at that unending luminescence you transact
Let us feel the puff of your threefold life
The way the Spirit moves around in your space
Ever-ancient
Ever-new

Blow on us as it blows among you

The way
When I leave my new window cracked
At the first of March
The sudden new breeze
Scatters my piously neat papers
All across my humbled office.

Blow like that.


“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

I see.
I hear.
I will
listen.

Up here

And down there, too.

Take Your Place Among Us

Dear Baby Jesus

It’s starting to make more sense to me
why people go home
come home
for Christmas

Maybe it’s just right that your birthday
would be marked
by a feverish return to the familiar

Everywhere these few two days
unsuspecting pilgrims
making the holiday trek
on rails, on tires, on wings

All en route
back to the center of their lives
back home
Back to a place of hoped-for gravity
in a world
otherwise weightless

Many find it
and there is gladness

Some do not
and with the forthcoming flip of the calendar
the search goes on


Now whether these holiday hoards know it or not
(that’s a matter of some theological debate, you know)
all this traveling home this week
seems a fitting party
for your fleshly advent among us

From the start of your story
you were always at the center of things

You’ve continually made your bed among us
right here in our ranks

We call it
Nativity

I remember well my mother’s chalky-white nativity set
Its annual December appearance on the dark marble hutch
along the wallpapered side of the dining room

After the stuffing of Thanksgiving
After the last LSU game in November
out it came
from the dark nether regions of the attic
all 12 pieces

The whole blessed scene
probably a Green Stamp purchase
during some closeout season gone by

I remember
your tiny little hands and feet
formed in cheap Plaster of Paris

your manger
cast in a sweat-shop mold like 1000s of others

your familiar scene-mates
each one with MADE IN HONG KONG affixed to their bottoms

All of it
as if to say
Jesus
the Lord of All
even down at the Dollar Den

And although
(when my mother’s attention was elsewhere)
it was my great delight to rearrange
shepherds and sages
to put Joseph outside with the bleating sheep
camels on their wise men
and
oxen up where only angels should trod

I never dared moved you, baby Jesus.
It never felt right.

You always seemed to fit
in the center of things

The hub for their wheel
The sun in their middle
to fix their orbits

Even as an infant
there you were
on the mantle
already calling God’s chosen band to gather round

You
the smallest
most helpless
most needy of them all
most Plaster of Paris among them

Born a sacred irony
their Life and Love and Lord


So I say
Come again
grown up Jesus
Come and take your post
at the center of our lives

Rearrange the oft-handled
mishandled pieces
of our homes and hearts
Until each finds its proper place on the periphery
encircling your Easter life

Come again
O Jesus
Be that blessed homecoming
at the end of all our misguided, wayward treks

Show us that weight of glory
that ballasts our wispy, worried world

Teach us to live in the shelter of your sanctuary
until at last
when the fever of this life is over
we are home
raised up!
for good

For this is who you are
Nativity Jesus
our Plaster of Paris Prince
Founder of my Fragile Faith

You
so small and yet so hilariously glorious
You
the hub of our salvation
the core of our communion
the weight of our world

Come
take your place among us
Right here
where you most belong

At the center of our lives

Charge to a New Pastor

On this, the day of your ordination to the pastoral office,
the Presbytery offers you this binary charge:

Firstly, remember these moments: the latticework of hands applied to your head, the nine rash and quixotic vows you have just made, and this wonderfully impossible summons to a particular, peculiar ministry among Jesus’ people. Remember this moment, because everything is different for you now. You are a Teaching Elder. And this new nomenclature calls for a fresh focus -- a myopia, even -- as, after today, you carve up your time and choose your tasks.

In the words of our new Form of Government, may you now be “committed [above all other tasks] to teaching the faith and equipping the saints for the work of ministry.” That may be new wording, but it honors a venerable Presbyterian tradition about how the pastor should spend her God-given time: Teaching the faith. Equipping the saints. In your pastorate, some will want you to become a generalist, to be many things to many people, to spread yourself out thinly and evenly, like some manner of ecclesiastical jelly—what one critic of mainline clerical ministry has called “a quivering mass of availability.”

But by your vows today, we pray you will instead preserve the best of your time and talent for these most crucial tasks: Teaching the faith. Equipping for ministry. Says Stanley Hauerwas: “Pastors would do well to examine their schedules and ruthlessly delete any activity that doesn't help people do that which they do in worship.” 1. Hear God 2. Respond to God.

Hear us well: Others can organize Pandamania. Others can surf OrientalTrading.com for hats and pencils. Many can redecorate the bulletin board, defrag the Sunday School computers, reattach eyes to the puppets, stock the goodie boxes for servicewomen.

It is not that you are now above these tasks, it is rather that you are now below them —- not in personhood, but in function. You are now the lowly steward of that undergirding word of God that God’s people urgently need —- that foundational news, that calls forth fresh faith, illicits new dreams, make saints out of sinners, raises the dead.

You are now to a First Church of Samuels, an Eli (without the age lines, of course). Whatever else you do, with and for your Samuels, mine the depths of scripture, eavesdrop for God’s word, keep an ear cocked for the shocking Easter news, and listen for the Spirit’s movement. Listen well, and speak well what you hear -— whether it takes 5 or 45 minutes, whether it wins you supporters or scoffers -— be the Eli we have now set you to be. Be a minister of the word for Jesus’ people in the world.

Know that you will have many hats put upon you, now that R-E-V precedes your name. Organizer, therapist, guru, motivational speaker, public relations officer, boiler superintendent, seasonal chaplain, replacement parent, replacement spouse, CEO, CFO, CIA (that’s a long story). Don’t dismiss these hats, or those who bring them, as if you cannot be bothered. Instead, stay connected to all who come and go with their real or felt needs. But we ask you to quietly, doggedly, protect that one fundamental work God is now giving you —- word and sacraments -- so that by these, your people will be built up and nourished as the people of God.

And so we charge you to remember your ordination to this peculiar post.

Never forget that everything is different for you now.

Secondly, I charge you to forget everything I just said.

Nothing changes today; not one thing that matters. You were yesterday, and will remain tomorrow, first and foremost, ontologically, a child of God and a simple student of Jesus. Nothing more. Nothing less. Never forget this. Show me a preacher who is no longer a mere Christian and I will show you a fire without heat or flame or light. Preachers like me crackle and pop and sputter, but in the end, God always uses mere believers, not unionized clerics, to light up the world.

We’ve ordained you, yes indeed, but that has no eternal effect on your status with God, and neither is it the reason you can now say you are “in the ministry.” You’ve been in the ministry most of your life—the ministry that matters, Jesus’ ministry—loving the Lord, loving neighbor. Baptism is the mark most holy; not ordination. Don’t ever forget this.

We suspect you won’t. The vision of church as including all of God’s people in service, what Romans calls “one body with many members,” that vision is floating around in your DNA. You saw it in your parents, you’ve taught it your kids, you’ve known it in the churches you have served, you believe it in your bones. Remarkable vision: “We who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.” No one is more important than another; only Christ is absolute.

But know that many will come wanting to make it about you; wanting, needing, you to be absolute. Some will tell you are indispensible. You are not. Some will insist you are needed in every meeting. You are not. Others will say you are the face of the church in the community (better yours than mine), but you are not. If they tell you, you are the boss, the leader, the head, the honcho, the alpha/omega … quietly remind them: that would be Jesus.

In the words of the poet Dawna Markova, “choose to risk your significance.” Work to keep yourself and the church you serve out of the absolute position. Work to keep God in it.
Lead worship in such a way that they leave saying, not “R. did a lovely job,” but “God be praised.” Preach in such a way that they respond, not to you “That was good sermon, R.,” but more to God: “Take my life and let it be …” Give counsel in such a manner that one says, not “I could not do this without you,” but “I know now how I can follow the Lord!”

And when others drive by on East B., instead of “Hey, isn’t that R.’s church?” let it be said, in large measure by the mere Christianity you practice within your ministry, “Hey, I think that’s Jesus’ church.”

Risk your significance, because the best thing we can say about you -- the best that can be said about any of us -- is that in life and in death, in our falling or in our rising, we belong to God.

Dear friend, now colleague, remember this truth:
Everything has changed. Nothing has changed.

You are a Teaching elder. You are a child of God.

Welcome.
Godspeed.

Resurrection Ripples

In the broadest bend of the long, gravel driveway leading to my Louisiana home place sat a pond of modest size. Various wildlife called the little lagoon home, including a fox and a veritable Tabernacle Choir of evening frogs. For much of the year, the pond supported a layer of deep green algae, thick on the surface like a porridge. This covering made for still waters, so stagnant one could drive by and not even notice there was a body of water in the bend of the lane.

Except that there were rocks, lots of rocks. It was fortuitous for me that the nearby driveway was laid in generous gravel. Many a summer hour I spent as a lad tossing that gravel, piece by piece, into the middle of that pond. Some stones skipped, some sputtered, a few larger specimens landed with an impressive ker-plunk. Regardless of size, all my tosses produced ripples of some kind on the water—ever-widening circles of effect, moving from center to shore. Even those singing nightclub frogs, quiet in the hot afternoon, knew something was afoot as the rippled waves washed up on their domiciles. Ripples.

Late this summer in our Sunday preaching we will take up the New Testament book of Acts, or at least portions thereof. “Book” hardly does Acts justice; more like “wild ride.” If the gospels give us the canon’s master story—the news of Jesus’ living, dying, and rising—then the adventure that is Acts serves up “the rest of the story.” And what a postscript to Jesus it is: flames flickering, tongues appearing, wind blowing; ailments healed, speeches preached, prayers answered; outcasts welcomed, zealots enraged, servants condemned; Peter is convinced, Paul is converted, and Stephen is convicted.

We might say that Acts is one new wave of divine drama after another. Every chapter reveals one more resurrection ripple flowing out into the world from the epicenter of Jesus’ astonishing new Easter-life. “He is risen!” turns out to be massive ker-plumk in the world, sending out rings of redemption in every direction.

Good thing. We need those ripples washing up on our shore, season after season. Acts awakens us to the divine power available in Jesus’ name. Acts emboldens us for the sometimes-bumpy encounters between gospel and culture. Acts stokes our faith imagination, inviting us—demanding us!—to consider what new Holy-Spirit-wave God is asking us to ride out into God’s world.

Ker-plunk.

Follow, Follow, Follow

The familiar (annoying?) tune of the Munchkins might as well be our church theme song, except that the path we trod as Christians is not the famed Yellow Brick Road. We walk the Jesus Way. We are, nevertheless, followers. We follow, follow, follow. (Sing with me now! Ug.)

“Followers.” There is little about this word that rings positive in the times in which we live. Do you want your kid to be a follower? Do you want to be known as a “follower?” The prevailing culture prizes autonomy, self-sufficiency, and “doing your own thing.” Everyone wants to be a superstar, “original.” Many of our cultural heroes not only stand apart, they stand alone. Who wants to mimic another?

And yet, we believers follow. As Jesus people, Jesus’ people, we do not blaze our own trail through this world. We seek to unmask the idolatry of incessant originality and instead give thanks for a “path of righteousness,” a way that leads to good standing with God (Psalm 1). And we do not walk alone. We walk behind one who has gone on up ahead of us, securing the destination and marking the way (Hebrews 2:17-18). It is encouraging to know that someone has been this way before.

In younger days, back before parenthood and grown-up responsibilities, I was a frequent backpacker. Especially in Boy Scout days, the packs we donned were of such a size that it made seeing the trail up ahead difficult. Although the landscape to the sides could bring visual relief, one usually spent the better part of a day’s walk staring at the waddling pack just ahead. And the boots. You learned to watch the boots of the guy in front of you. Up and down hills, across streams, around the mud: By paying attention to the boots a few steps in front of you, you could avoid a great deal of pitfalls along the way. Muddy socks, slippery moss, twisted ankles. It paid to be an attentive follower.

We are talking in church lately a good deal about DISCIPLESHIP. A disciple is essentially a student: a pupil of a teacher. Disciples follow someone. As it were, they study the feet of one who walks ahead of them and seek to mimic the moves and follow the same path. Discipleship means giving up on the idea that one can bushwhack a corridor through life however and wherever one sees fit. The mark of baptism says, “I am a follower of Jesus now. I am walking in his way, following his steps. I relinquish the idea that I must always be my own woman, my own man.”

In the regressive, selfish times in which we walk, this new posture is as counter-cultural an act as one could imagine: to give up our “God-given” right to walk alone, in our own way, and instead to give over our lives to one who leads, guides, and directs our path. Following smacks of foolishness. And yet, it is the way of salvation. Step by step, turn by turn, we study the feet of Jesus and mimic his moves. Therein we find ourselves, and our neighbor, and God—all in following another.

In the words of songwriter Chris Rice:

Father Love prepares a place,
and Brother Jesus leads the way.
Follow to the place where you belong.

Capacitation

What a great word. Fun to say, too. Capacitation.

Not quite Carly Simon’s famous word, but close.

A version of the term I did not anticipate popped out at me unexpectedly last fall, a springy snake from one of those trickster can o’ nuts. In October, thirty of us gathered in our Social Hall with our Dominican Republic pals Pastor C. and his wife. We met for a panel discussion on ministry, hoping to learn from them home-grown insights about moving out into God’s world. Helping God’s people grow in ministry seemed naturally to take us down the path of growing leaders.

“The pastor cannot do it all himself,” C. reminded us, through our interpreter. “You have to grow leaders. You have to capacitate them.”

Capaci-what?

As the moderator of the panel time, I looked quizzically at our interpreter.

“What was that word!?”

She hastily retraced the Spanish in her mind. “That’s what he said,” somewhat bemused herself. “He’s saying capacitate them.” Pop! (the aforementioned snake from the can)

What a great word for growing ministry.

Two years ago in our church offices we were experiencing perennial problems staying connected to the Internet. The boys from Adelphia swooped in, crawled all over our building as in catacombs, and soon issued the diagnosis. Old wiring.

“We’re going to pull all new cable through the building. That should keep you connected, and increase capacity.” Indeed it has. Presbyterian bits and bytes sail along these days.

The person who trusts me will not only do what I’m doing but even greater things, because I, on my way to the Father, am giving you the same work to do that I’ve been doing. You can count on it. That’s Jesus, in John 14.

Turns out our Christ is in the capacitation business: growing God’s people—growing us!—to do greater works in the world for God. And growing congregations, too: to provide more capacity for others to share in God’s ministry. Jesus, the cable guy; rewiring the church.

I’ve spent the better part of 30 months in the catacombs of our shared spiritual house, working on what I now know to call capacitation. I wonder: How is God calling you to capacitate? In your family? your work? your world? In your self?

This month, four of us have the opportunity to capacitate the mission partnership we share with our Dominican sisters and brothers. During his visit in the fall, Pastor C. invited D.D., C.W., and me to come to the annual General Assembly meeting of his church—the Evangelical Church of the Dominican Republic.

Pastor C. was recently elected General Secretary of the entire church, and in that post he will watch over all 80+ ECDR congregations and chapels on the island, their pastors, and their mission. He tells us that by our coming he hopes to expand the blessings of our long-standing partnership by inviting other Dominican churches to consider stepping out into similar cross-cultural relationships.

His sense of call to this has awakened our own: Here in Shenango Presbytery, D.D. has encouraged Clen-More and New Wilmington churches to reach out to new congregations for sharing in the DR partnership. Already West Middlesex has responded by sending some members on our March trip. It it conceivable, in a season still on its way, that there may be multiple, parallel partnerships reciprocating between God’s people in western Penn and God’s people on the northern shores of the Dominican. Exciting stuff, and we see this as God calling us to do some rewiring. Capacitation.

What a great word. And so much fun to see.