You're Ok...It's Ok

Your Servant is Listening

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:54:00 +0000

(Preached on January 15, 2012 at St. John's United Church of Christ)

Allow me to begin by saying, thank you, from the bottom of my heart for inviting me and my family to share this day with you. It has been an honor to spend these last few months getting to know your search committee, praying for God’s direction and listening for the Spirit’s leading during this search and call process. I am grateful for the kindness and welcome that you have extended to our family and I pray that today will be a day of joy and blessing for all of us.

You may be familiar with the story, The Emperor’s New Clothes, but just in case you aren’t, here’s a recap –

“A vain Emperor who cares for nothing but his appearance and attire hires two tailors who are really swindlers that promise him the finest, best suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or "just hopelessly stupid". The Emperor cannot see the cloth himself, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing unfit for his position; his ministers do the same. When the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they mime dressing him and the Emperor then marches in procession before his subjects, who play along with the pretense. Suddenly, a child in the crowd, too young to understand the desirability of keeping up the pretense, blurts out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all and the cry is taken up by others. The Emperor cringes, suspecting the assertion is true, but holds himself up proudly and continues the procession, deciding never to be so vain again and to take his position more seriously.”

Many contemporary biblical scholars suggest that the passage from 1 Samuel 3 reads like an ancient folktale similar to this one. Much like The Emperor’s New Clothes – the narrative of God’s call to Samuel certainly has its fair share of scoundrels, villains, liars, and lack of vision. The back story is as follows: Eli has – for all intents and purposes handed over the reigns of his priestly responsibilities to his two deviant sons – men who make a mockery of the priesthood by stealing from the sacrifices offered to the Lord, violating the women who served in the tent of meeting and threatening violence against any worshipers who protested their abominable behavior. Despite being warned several times that his priestly household is on the wrong path – Eli appears to be oblivious to it all. Our text tells us that he is physically blind, and alludes to the fact that he is spiritually blind as well, “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread…”

Samuel is set in contrast to these foolish men as the more worthy priest, despite being just a child – just as it takes an innocent child in The Emperor’s New Clothes to point out the Emperor’s nakedness, the obvious truth that everyone else was ignoring. One commentator suggests that, “While the story of Samuel’s call is told for the larger purpose of predicting the fall of Eli’s family – the nature of the story suggests an important truth regarding any individual’s personal relationship with God.”

In Samuel’s day and time the word of God was rare. There were no visions. No one was being called to do God’s work. The priests were corrupt and uninspired. So much so that Samuel – despite being raised in the temple since he was weaned - supposedly didn’t even “know” God. And while I’m sure Samuel knew “about” God, we are reminded that knowing God’s stories and rituals and scriptures is not the same as knowing God personally and intimately. Knowledge does not equal relationship. Relationship requires risk.

In our text today God took a risk on Samuel. God knew that no one else in all of Israel had the ears to hear or the eyes to see the message that God so urgently needed to convey. No one, that is, except Samuel; a child; the least of these.

But Samuel also had to take a risk on God – it took God repeating his name four times before Samuel could even believe that it truly was God calling him. And then Samuel had to take a risk with Eli…he had to take this horrible message of God’s disappointment back to his boss, his mentor, the only father figure in his life. And yet Samuel responds – “Here I am…”

Today I challenge us to see Samuel’s story as our own story. To see ourselves – bumbling and fumbling like Samuel – in our effort to respond to God. Today, like Samuel, we will take a risk with God and with one another.

How might we listen for God’s call in our own lives today, in the life of this congregation?

God calls when we least expect it and God’s call is rarely as clear as we would like. But despite the distractions that bombard us, despite the rarity of God’s call, despite our fear of taking God’s risk, let us believe, confidently, that no one is too small, too unimportant, too inexperienced to be used by God for meaningful work. Even today’s Gospel Lesson reminds us that the earliest disciples wondered if God had truly called Jesus as the Messiah – Can anything good come out of Nazareth, Nathanael wondered…

In his book, Is It I, Lord? Discerning God’s Call to Be a Pastor, James Chatham offers this insight, “At the top of my church bulletin each Sunday, under the church’s name is [this] logo, “Ordinary people answering God’s call.” The term “ordinary people” is appropriate because that is whom God calls…God selects shepherds who have been tending sheep in the desert, female judges holding court under a palm tree, fishermen hot and sweaty in their fishing boats, teenage girls frightened and shy, herdsmen and dressers of sycamore trees. In response to God’s call we pose a bundle of questions, good reasons why God should call someone else. Those doubts can nearly dominate our brains, making us hesitant to even consider God’s call. God’s reply is, “GO!! and I will be with you.” That may not seem like a lot, but it is enough.”

One commentator notes that two things will always be true about God’s call – it will be something we “can” do even if we are unsure and it will bring us joy even if we don’t expect it. Samuel – lowly child that he was – was able to speak truth to power. He conveyed God’s message to Eli in a way that Eli had no choice but to hear. And, although I am sure sharing this message with Eli did not bring Samuel joy in the moment, our text reminds us that “As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord.”

From my own experience I’ve found that God’s call is not just a one time thing. We are called over and over and over. As I look back at the journey that has brought me to this day I am aware of multiple moments in which I heard God’s call. The time when, as I nine year old child, I first professed my faith in Christ. When as a 16 year old girl I felt the call to vocational ministry on top of a mountain at an Navajo reservation in Arizona, when as a young adult, after sharing with the conservative church of my childhood about my experience of a mission trip to Africa, an elderly woman approached me and said, “God has big plans for you…I could go on and on.

And I am convinced that God has called each of you, too. One scholar notes that “God may speak to us in the words of a parent or a friend…God may whisper to our hearts as we drive our cars or sit by a shady lakeside or lie awake in the dark of the night. God calls each us of us personally, not generically, and God will speak in a way that we can understand. God’s call for us may not be as specific as it was for Samuel – but God has given each of us special gifts and has called us to use these abilities in service to the world.”

It is out of our humanity that God calls us.

It is easy to fill our lives with so many distractions that we lose sight of who we are in God. Eli’s family allowed power and corruption to close their eyes and seal their ears from seeing and hearing God’s call. The Emperor allowed this pride, vanity and insecurity to make a fool out of himself and his kingdom. Like Samuel and like the child from the folktale, may we allow ourselves to be transparent – to seek after truth – so that the word of God might remain alive and evident in our world today.

Tomorrow as a nation we will honor and celebrate the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. Raised in a family of ministers, Martin Luther King initially ran from God’s call on his life. King majored in sociology and was determined not to follow in his father and grandfather’s ministerial footsteps. Like Samuel, God had to call Martin Luther King, Jr two, three, maybe even four times before he finally heard and responded. Like the child from The Emperor’s New Clothes, King found the boldness to name the reality of discrimination and injustice that so many others were ignoring. Thanks be to God that Martin Luther King, Jr. finally said, “Here I am Lord, you servant is listening…”

In reflecting on how he wanted to be remembered, King said this:

“Every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral. And I don't think of it in a morbid sense. Every now and then I ask myself, "What is it that I would want said?" … I don't want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize, that isn't important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards, that's not important. Tell him not to mention where I went to school. I'd like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day, that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say, on that day, that I did try, in my life, to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.”

As a nation we can say with confidence that Martin Luther King, Jr. did all those things and more. King - an ordinary, imperfect person – fulfilled God’s call on his life in ways that few of us could ever imagine. King took God’s risk and changed the world.

Today, as a congregation, like Samuel, like the child from The Emperors New Clothes, Like King you will take a risk. You will step out on faith and seek to follow God’s will for St. John’s United Church of Christ. I am humbled, honored and grateful to stand before you today as you consider calling me to be your pastor. It is my sincere hope that the Spirit is leading us in the same direction and that we might partner together to seek God’s vision for this community; that we might say together, “Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening.”

Thanks Be to God.

Water is Life

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:12:00 +0000

Water Is Life

Mark 1:4-11

Maybe you heard Rachel Beckwith’s story last July. A local news station in Seattle tells it this way,

“It was a horrible weekend: shootings in Des Moines and Auburn, fires and accidents, more and more mind-numbing details of the hateful, cold-blooded killings in Norway - all of it making a nasty stew of evening news. But it was a horrible weekend with one glowing kernel of love and faith and good cheer: Rachel Beckwith.

She was just 9 years old when she was critically injured, her spinal cord severed in a pile-up on I-90 last week.

The Saturday after the crash, her parents finally took her off life-support.

Too young to be taken, yes, but the way she lived and what she left behind when she died put energy and light back into a cold, dark weekend.

For her birthday in June, she told everybody she didn’t want any presents. She wanted people to donate to Charitywater.org, a group that drills wells and brings fresh water to people in developing countries.

Rachel raised $220, pretty good for a 9-year-old but $80 short of her goal. "No problem," she told her family. "Next year for my tenth birthday I’ll just work harder and raise more!" She didn’t get that chance of course, but boy, is she raising more money.

Her church Pastor Ryan Meeks says Rachel seemed to naturally recognize when people needed help. “I think that’s incredibly mature for anybody, let alone a child of 9,” Meeks said.

Rachel's donation page was re-opened when she was in the hospital. By…Friday night Rachel’s total was up to $6,000. Monday evening it climbed past $140,000. By Wednesday morning, more than $380,000 had been raised.

The cable and broadcast networks heard about the story and ran various versions. It spread on Facebook and Twitter with some high-profile help. Actress Alyssa Milano tweeted it to her million-plus followers, Seahawk quarterback Matt Hasselbeck tweeted too.

“It is something that hits us at our core,” said Pastor Meeks.”There is nothing natural about losing a nine-year-old girl. But there's something that we’re attracted to when life comes out of death.”

And now Rachel Beckwith’s quest to pay for water in far-off lands is a flood of love. People from all over the world have watched, listened, tweeted, messaged, followed, friended and best of all donated. Pastor Meeks sees a simple and obvious lesson in Rachel’s actions, and the world’s response. “A child teaching us adults that maybe it is that simple. You do what you can.”

There’s something that we’re attracted to when life comes out of death…

Rachel, in her 9 year old innocence recognized that Water is Life. The primacy of water is at the core of our beings and at the core of our universe. If you been keeping up with what’s going on in contemporary astronomy, then you’ve heard that a planet called Kepler-22b was officially discovered in December in another solar system’s Goldilocks Zone - that region around a star where a planet with sufficient atmospheric pressure can maintain liquid water on its surface…leading to the reasonable conclusion that this planet could very well likely maintain life. Water is life.

We also know that lack of water leads to death…

I’m sure you’ve heard these facts – they are bounced around us all the time – but I’m not sure that even now we’ve really ever heard them.

• 884 million people in the world do not have access to safe water. This is roughly one in eight of the world’s population. (WHO-UNICEF)

• 1.8 million children die every year as a result of diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. This amounts to around 5000 deaths a day. (UNDP)

• Water-related disease is the second biggest killer of children worldwide, after acute respiratory infections like tuberculosis. (UNDP)

We often choose to ignore these facts:

The average North American uses 400 liters of water a day. (UNDP)

• The average person in the developing world uses 10 liters of water every day for their drinking, washing and cooking. (Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC))

• Agriculture accounts for over 80% of the world’s water consumption. (UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

And now the kicker:

It is estimated that America spends an average of $450 billion a year every Christmas. Does your bank statement or credit card bill reflect your contribution to this astonishing number? I know mine does.

The estimated cost of reaching “basic levels of coverage…in water and sanitation” is thought to be about $9 billion. A mere $30 billion a year would allow for the “achieving universal coverage” for water and sanitation worldwide. $420 billion less than what we spend on Christmas every year.

Water is dangerous and can destroy life:

The flood in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 2008, fifth largest national disaster to public infrastructure in the U.S’s recorded history, resulted in $6 Billion worth of damage.

The tsunami in Japan in 2011 resulted in 27,000 death, injuries and missing persons.

And despite all this we continue to turn to water for solace, for relaxation, for respite and for rest. We place fountains in our offices and our homes and our gardens in hopes that the gentle flowing water will reduce our stress levels. We play music with crashing ocean waves in the backdrop to put ourselves to sleep. We flee from our every day lives by taking our vacations to the rivers and lakes and oceans in the world.

How can something so central to our human existence…Water…be both soothing and terrifying, life-giving and havoc-wreaking?

I think it is no mere coincidence that the Gospel of Mark begins Jesus’ story with his baptism – not with his birth, not with the visit from the Magi, not with his foray in the temple as a young boy, not with his first miracle even – but instead with his willingness to wander into the wilderness and wade into the River Jordan with John and John’s followers.

Indeed Mark notes that Jesus’ baptism is the beginning of the Good News; the inauguration of a new era of peace; the beginning of a future filled with hope.

Just as Israel’s own journey with God took them through wilderness and chaos so, too, does Jesus seek God first in the wilderness…

Kathryn Matthews Huey, a UCC pastor, reflects on today’s Gospel lesson as follows:

“Our stories about water, even at its best, have a kind of power and risk and drama. Our beautiful images of baptism, or of God "leading us beside still waters" (Psalm 23) are balanced by the nightmares that must haunt survivors of tsunami in Japan. Think of the book and movie, "The Perfect Storm," and the image of a little boat, struggling against a mighty wave. It's no wonder we use the word "engulfed" when we're talking about being overwhelmed by something. Oddly, though, drama, power and risk are not so much associated with the "nice" little story (in Mark, stories are often shorter than in the other Gospels) of Jesus being baptized in the River Jordan. In our mind's eye, it's a lovely scene, John dipping Jesus beneath the waters of the river, and Jesus hearing God up above claiming him as God's beloved Son, and a sweet dove, the Holy Spirit, hovering above. A little time with this text, however, stirs our imaginations. We read of a sky that doesn't just open up but is "torn apart." A rugged prophet preaches a dangerous message of repentance, renewal, and return to God. [In this Gospel Lesson], we're exhorted to "Remember our baptism," not as a sentimental journey or an effort to recapture lost enthusiasm, but to seek equilibrium on a storm-tossed sea, to get our bearings, to remember who (and whose) we are.”

Mark’s rendition of Jesus’ baptism sets the tone for the entire Gospel – there is an urgency, a suddenness, an explosiveness, an immediacy in Jesus’ ministry. It is, in fact, this urgency that distinguished John’s method of baptism from other commonly practiced forms of ritual washing in the early first century.

If you’ve ever heard another sermon about Jesus’ baptism, as I am sure most of us have, then you will have heard of the complications and the controversy that surrounds it in the other Gospels.

If John’s baptism was for the repentance and forgiveness of sins then does it imply that Jesus had something to repent from or to seek forgiveness for?

Since Jesus was baptized by John, and since Jesus never actually baptized anyone himself, does this somehow imply that John was superior to Jesus, or that John’s ministry was superior to Jesus’ ministry?

In Mark’s gospel these concerns appear to be of no importance. John issued the urgent call - repent, seek baptism, be forgiven – and people from all over the surrounding area responded…and so did Jesus. And in an astonishing act of God’s own self-disclosure the Heavens are ripped open and Jesus is confirmed and affirmed as God’s Beloved Son. God has become known and is accessible in the person and work of Jesus because of this event. God’s spirit hovers over Jesus’ baptismal waters just as the Spirit hovered over the chaotic waters in the beginning of creation.

Frederick Buechner says that going under the baptismal waters “symbolizes the end of everything about your life that is less than human and coming out of the water is the beginning of something strange and new and hopeful. You can breathe again.”

As Jesus submerged himself into the rushing flow of the Jordan River – supported by John’s callused hands, Jesus radically identified with our human nature, our weakness and our sin. As he splashed out of those waters Jesus’ divine mission was conferred upon him, his sonship was affirmed by God’s own voice and he was filled with the Spirit of God’s Holy Love.

I was baptized as a nine year old child. The water was as warm as bathwater and I wore a dress which floated up around me. I remember being worried about that dumb dress pretty much the whole time I was in the baptismal pool. And while my baptism wasn’t facilitated by a wild man in a rushing river, and while the heavens weren’t ripped apart as I emerged from the water – I distinctly remember feeling full to bursting with a sense of urgency to give my whole self to God.

Do you remember your baptism? Were you an adult, or a child? Maybe you were just a baby, sprinkled with water, blessed of God. Perhaps your parents felt that sense of God’s urgency on your behalf. However or whenever you found yourself in the baptismal waters – I’m guessing that, like me, you didn’t see a dove, or hear God’s booming voice. The heavens remained peacefully intact and you didn’t set off on a world changing mission like Jesus did. But I am convinced that God blessing was equally upon us – whether we felt it or not – those waters giving us life anew.

Today, Christians all around the world are pondering Jesus’ baptism. We are challenged to remember and reaffirm our own baptisms. These texts compel us to search again for the urgency of God’s call on our own lives, to find ways to partner with the Spirit in God’s continuing creation.

What do you need to do today to be filled with new life?

Do you need to respond to John’s call for repentance and forgiveness? Buechner says that “to repent is to come to your senses. It isn’t so much something you do as something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying, “I’m sorry” than to the future and saying, Wow!” I invite you to use the end of our service today to look toward God’s future for you with awestruck wonder. Reach out and seize the life God has for you. If you’d like to be baptized we can plan to make that happen for you.

Do you need to remember and re-affirm your own baptism? In Mark’s Gospel “the people were hungry and thirsty for God, and they were anxious and eager to experience a new day, long promised to Israel, and here was this powerful preacher telling them to get ready for it at last. So they flocked out there to the river, closer to wilderness than to nice, clean temple, and sought forgiveness for their sins.” How might you re-kindle your own hunger and thirst for God? Perhaps you need to come forward, dip your hands into the water we have in these basins at the front of the sanctuary, and recommit yourself to the wild and urgent work God has called you to in this world.

Maybe, like Rachel Beckwith, it is time to make your life about something greater than yourself before it is too late. Are there ways in which you can bring life out of death? Can you give drink to the thirsty, food to the hungry, clothes to the naked, companionship to the infirmed, solace to the imprisoned? Make today the day you commit yourselves to working for God’s goodness in the world.

We have hope, as Christians because – through Jesus – life really does come out of death. In our descent into the baptismal waters we die with Christ and when we emerge we are raised into eternal life. May we hear anew, and be convinced, that we are each God’s beloved child; may we know that God is pleased with us; and may we focus our hearts and minds on the urgency of God’s calling to Life, full and eternal Life, for each of us. Amen

Resources:

http://www.charitywater.org/

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=1/8/2012

http://www.gbod.org/site/c.nhLRJ2PMKsG/b.3879973/k.9C35/Lectionary_Planning_Helps_for_Sundays.htm?override=yes&date=20120108

http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/january-8-2012-the-baptism.html

http://processandfaith.org/resources/lectionary-commentary/yearb/2012-01-08/baptism-jesusfirst-sunday-after-epiphany

http://www.preachingpeace.org/lectionaries/yearb-epiphany1/

http://wiki.faithfutures.org/index.php?title=Proper_1B

http://www.cresourcei.org/lectionary/YearB/Bepiphany1nt.html

http://www.king5.com/news/local/Stunning-fundraising-around-girls-dying-wish--126148123.html

http://www.water.cc/living-water/resources/

http://www.adventconspiracy.org/default.aspx?page=3686

http://thewaterproject.org/?gclid=CJr00vO9vq0CFTOCtgodrRLoxA

http://act.ucc.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=49684&em_id=39443.0

Frederick Buechner’s Wishful Thinking and Peaceful Treasures

Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary, Mark by R. Alan Culpepper

Fear and Forgiveness and Worthiness

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 21:51:00 +0000

Hey...Look! I have a blog. I totally forgot about this poor website which is understandable I guess - you know with all the car wrecks, and single parenting since I still haven't found a job in Iowa yet, and the utility disasters...I suppose it makes sense that I haven't had the time or energy to put fingers to the keyboard and pound out something thoughtful or witty in the last few months. But never fear an idea for a new post has been ruminating in my head for the last few weeks and I finally decided to try to put it out there for the world (or my handful of readers) to see. So here goes...

Disclaimer: This post contains non-orthodox, potentially heretical (although in our post-post-modern world I'm pretty sure nothing is heretical anymore but alas that is another post...) assertions about faith and God and humanity. These are simply thoughts that have been stirring around in my heart: they give me comfort, they draw me closer to God, they shape how I understand Jesus and they allow me to make meaning out of the tragedy that I see day in and day out as a hospice chaplain. So while I welcome the theological debate, please be kind.

Occasionally as a chaplain I have patients who request a pastoral care visit to specifically talk about sin and forgiveness. In preparation for their nearing deaths these patients often verbalize a lingering fear that despite having made professions of faith and following the tenets for salvation as delineated by their respective Christian Traditions they are still afraid that some sin from their past will hold them back from being in God's presence at the time of death. They are confident that they have done everything anyone had ever told them they needed to do to be SURE of their salvation - and yet they still aren't sure.

They don't have peace.

They are afraid.

As a chaplain I do not evangelize. Ever. To Anyone. I listen. I explore. I listen more. I affirm or challenge. I listen more. I pray. I hold hands. I listen more. I keep silent.

With these patients I ask what they might need to feel peace? Confession of specific sin? Participation in a specific ritual? Affirmation from Scripture? Affirmation from an authority greater than me?

The responses are usually the same - "I don't know what I need...I'm just afraid."

And that...my friends...makes me sad.

How heartbroken God must be that fear has become the foundation of our faith. We have taught people that at the core of our beings we are broken, battered, unlovable, and unforgivable.

I refuse to believe this. In fact I stopped believing this a long time ago and I am saddened every single time I see someone tortured spiritually by the fear that a God who is supposed to be loving might damn them for all eternity for sins they can neither recall nor confess.

I do not deny that we sin. I sin every day, an infinite amount of times a day. I sin with my words, thoughts, deeds, actions or failures to act. I fall far, far short of the goodness that I know to be at the core of my being. I know that God sees my failures. I believe that God knows them intimately. If God has emotions then I am certain that I frustrate the shit out of God on a regular basis; I anger God; I embarrass God; I break God's heart. I believe that God wants more for me and from me that I will ever be able to give. I trust that God is working tirelessly for good within me and in the world around me to make right the wrongs that I notoriously make. I believe sin is personal and corporate.

And yet...

I believe that God loves me, you, my patients, every single thing that has breath - fiercely, tirelessly, relentlessly, wholly, abundantly, irrationally, perfectly.

I believe that God has forgiven me, you, my patients, every single thing that has breath - completely, mercifully, extravagantly, undeservedly, blissfully, unhesitatingly, unconditionally.

There is no reason to fear. God wants us to be at peace.

It is good to want to know with confidence that when we close our eyes in this world we will open them again and look full into the face of God. It is good to want to be better - to sin less, to love more, to fail less, to honor God more.

But how much better is it to want to do these things so that we might live fully into the worthiness the God has already placed upon us rather than striving to do them out of fear that God might not find us worthy.

_____________________________________

Last week Anderson had a bad night. He was making poor choices left and right and I was frustrated and fed up and I snapped at him. He came into the kitchen and said, "Mommy - do you still love me?"

My heart broke.

I knelt down so I could look in his eyes and I said, "Anderson I need you to listen to me. I have been frustrated tonight. I don't like some of the choices you've made. I should not have yelled at you. BUT. No matter how frustrated I am. No matter how many bad choices you make. There is NOTHING you can do that will ever make me stop loving you. I love you with my whole heart."

If only we could believe that God loves us like that too.

________________________________________

Finally a quote from Succubus Revealed by Michelle Read (I highly recommend this series especially if you are into vampires and paranormal stuff, lots of adult content and angels who chain smoke and drink whiskey like it is water.) This conversation takes place after Georgina has her soul reclaimed from Hell and has become human again; part of a conversation with her Guardian Angel Carter.

"I'm not worthy of that," I said. I might be human now, but I understand how powerful a heavenly creature Carter was. "I don't deserve that much regard."

He reached out and tipped my chin up. "You do, Georgina. And if you don't believe me now, then strive to be. Live your life. Be kind. Love those you know. Love those you don't know. Be worthy of your soul."

Would that we all might strive to live fully into the worthiness that God has already identified within us.

Peace be with us. May we not be afraid.

Do What You Want

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 21:40:00 +0000

A few days ago I posted to facebook that I'd received a call to schedule an interview for a job in Iowa.

(Side note: The interview is this coming Friday at 11am (CDT). I'd appreciate your positive thoughts and prayers...)

Anyway...the comments rolled in - congratulations, celebrations, kind words, expressions of sorrow from folks who we will leave behind once our family is permanently settled in Iowa - but there was one comment that gave me pause. A friend said, "Wow. That's news! Hope this is what you want!"

Another friend checked in with me today via twitter asking, "... is hospice work the area you are still wanting to focus on or do you want to expand your horizons? or serve a church"

In an email message exchange with one of my mother-in-laws last week (I'm blessed to have two wonderful mother-in-laws) she encouraged me to journal about my experiences...perhaps to make lists of things I'm grateful for, or things I want to do someday...

It is as if every time I turn around someone else is asking me:

"What do you want?"

"Is this what you want?"

"What do you want to do?"

And the answer is...well...I just don't know.

It is clearly a privilege to even have the option to entertain this thought...that I might have a choice with regard to my vocation, my job, my calling is more than the majority of humans ever have the chance to know. For that in and of itself I am grateful...and mindful...and humbled.

And yet the question still haunts me.

I've followed my mother-in-law's advice and I've journaled some.

On July 30th I wrote:

I'd like to pastor a small church in the country where I can preach and teach and write and do pastoral care without charting and officiate weddings and funerals and baptize folks.

I'd like to live in the country where it is quiet and calm; where Anderson and the dogs can play; where I could have a garden and chickens...

On August 5th I wrote:

Someone asked me what I want...

What I want is...

A peaceful job that pays $45,000+ and that is meaningful.

Our family to be reunited soon.

The be able to pay all our bills on time and to have a little money to save or spend.

To live in a more rural setting that is peaceful and quiet.

I'm clearly sensing a theme in the direction towards which my heart is yearning.

But I also know that small rural churches in the country likely won't pay enough to enable us to pay our bills on time, or save anything - and there are no "off" days, no PTO, no flexible spending account, things I've been spoiled with in the corporate world. The search and call process can take months to years and so reuniting our family quickly is likely not an option.

AND...

I know that taking a corporate job means that the pace of life won't be peaceful, I won't have time to write or preach or teach, there will continue to be lots of charting...and probably little time for a garden or chickens.

My response to my twitter friend today was this, "I guess in this economy I'll be happy w/just getting a job :-)"

And on some level...that's the god's honest truth. Just having the opportunity to interview for anything in this day and time is a gift and I'm grateful for it. My life will only be peaceful when I make peace within myself. There will be time time for writing and preaching and teaching and gardening and chicken-keeping if I make time for those things.

But a farmhouse way out in the country sure would be nice...

(I love this song. I love this band.)

For Sale By Owner

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 22:13:00 +0000

Hey folks! I interrupt this friendly theology/random musings blog for a brief sales pitch.

In anticipation of our move to Iowa we need to sell or rent our house! This is an adorable 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath townhouse located in a very quiet neighborhood in Nicholasville, KY. The house boasts just over 1400 sq feet, with a spacious, fenced back yard. The house is within walking distance of the city park, the dog park and the library. This is the perfect home for families with kids and pets. So if you know anyone looking to buy or rent (maybe Asbury seminary students??) spread the word! Please send me an email at jlmschirm@gmail.com if you are interested in knowing more or coming by for a showing!

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom (door leads to large walk in closet)

Full sized bath in upstairs hallway

Bedroom #2

We currently use this for a playroom/library. There's plenty of room for a queen sized bed and additional traditional bedroom furniture. Good sized closet too!

Bedroom #3 (see additional photos of this room below)

View of main hallway from kitchen. All appliances convey.

Passthru to dining area.

I love kitchens with a pantry!

Half bath on the main floor.

Main living space with new, beautiful laminate floors as of Dec 2010.

Dining area

View of living room from dining area.

View from deck.

Plenty of room for a chair, grill, etc.

Side yard landscaping.

HUGE fenced in back yard! Perfect for dogs, kids and a swingset, trampoline or a pool!

The flowers are all mature perennials that will come back just a beautiful year after year.

Oversized one car garage.

Additional view of Bedroom #3.

View of dining area from living room.

Change is such hard work - Billy Crystal

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 22:54:00 +0000

Maybe you know this because you are friends with Matt on facebook, or because you are part of our family, or because you have heard it through the grapevine, or maybe you haven't heard this at all...so I'll just lay it out here for all the world (aka my facebook friends/blog readers/twitter followers) to see:

Matt has accepted a position as the Assistant Baseball Coach at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa.

If you've known us throughout the various phases of our life together you'll know that Matt's goal has been to work in baseball - coaching, instructing, playing, analyzing - and for the last 4 years he hasn't been able to find meaningful work in the field. He is as called to baseball as I am to ministry. For that reason alone this opportunity is an exciting experience for him and for our family.

The nuts and bolts of this transition are as follows: Matt will move to Iowa on July 30th. Anderson and I will stay in Kentucky until we can either sell/rent our house and/or until I can find a job in Iowa (preferably in ministry and preferably making the same amount of money or more...) So things remain very up in the air. For my Hospice friends and Central Baptist Church friends...I'm not leaving quite yet...there will be plenty of time to plan for changes and say our good-byes thankfully.

There're lots of reasons why I am excited to move to Iowa: Matt will be so much happier, we'll be near Matt's family, we have tons of friends that will be nearby who have kids Anderson's age, doing something new vocationally is always interesting, it snows a lot, gay people can get married there!

Reasons why I'm nervous as we prepare to make this transition: I'm heartbroken at the thought of moving away from "home" and my family all over again, will I ever be able to find a church that I love as much as Central Baptist, it is REALLY hot there, doing something new vocationally is always scary - will I be able to find something as fulfilling as Hospice, do the Barenaked Ladies even know where Iowa is, much less play there?

If this feels sudden to you, rest easy...it's been just as sudden for us. Within just a few short weeks our world has been turned upside down. We'd love to have your support and prayers as we figure it all out.

Because the housing market is so awful we've gotten discouraging news from a realtor - so we're going to have to work extra hard to sell our house on our own, or find a renter. Please pray for that. If you know of anyone looking for a home, please send them our way.
I will be working two jobs here - while also trying to find a job in Iowa - while also single parenting. Please pray for my search process and my sanity.
It will be so hard on all of us to be apart, especially for an extended period of time. Please pray for us and Andeson especially - that boy LOVES his daddy.
Kentucky is home for me - and spending lots of time with my parents, grandparents and brother/sister in law and nephew is a regular part of our world. I'm already grieving our separation. Please pray for them, and for us, especially Anderson who LOVES his grandma and papaw as we look for new ways to stay connected despite the distance.

Thanks to facebook and this blog and twitter, etc. I trust we'll all stay in touch just like we do now. Thanks be to God for your friendship, prayers and support!

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

Anatole France

There’s Nothing You Can Know That Isn’t Known

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Mon, 30 May 2011 01:05:00 +0000

There’s Nothing You Can Know That Isn’t Known

Acts 17: 22-31

As a teenager I was lucky enough to have several opportunities to visit Washington, DC. The trip that stands out most in my memory is the very first time I went to DC on a school trip as a 7^th grader. It was early in the springtime, my mom went with me on that trip and I still remember how excited we were to see our nation’s capital. We experienced the usual whirlwind DC tour – all the monuments, museums, sacred places in the history of our democracy – and of course we spent ample time in Arlington National Cemetery. I’ll never forget what it was like to witness the Changing of the Guard ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider for the very first time.

I’m certain that you are familiar with the Tomb of the Unknown Solider in Arlington Cemetery, but did you know that there are tombs dedicated to unknown soldiers all over the world including two others in the US – one in Philadelphia dedicated to an unknown Revolutionary war soldier and one in Mississippi dedicated to an unknown Confederate solider. “The tombs typically contain the remains of a dead soldier who is unidentified (or "known but to God" as the stone is sometimes inscribed) and thought to be impossible ever to identify, so that he or she might serve as a symbol for all of the unknown dead wherever they fell.” The Tomb of the Unknown Solider in Arlington National Cemetery is guarded by carefully selected and trained ceremonial military guards and during the summer months visitors can witness the “changing of the guard” every 30 minutes. I remember watching in captivated, reverent silence as two of my peers placed a wreath at the tomb during the ceremony. Witnessing the meticulous ritual involved with guarding the tomb and the changing of the guards is nothing short of a holy experience.

It’s fitting, I suppose – with it being Memorial Day weekend and all – that Acts 17 is one of our lectionary passages for today. Memories of the Tomb of the Unknown Solider flooded back to me as I read, and studied and considered Paul’s experience of an altar inscribed “To an unknown God,” in Athens.

Let us begin our exploration of this passage with a little context. Paul had just caused a ruckus in Berea, the town where he was previously preaching, and had been whisked away to Athens to wait in safety for Silas and Timothy – his fellow missionaries – to catch up. Paul decided to make the best of his time in Athens and while touring about the city he became “distressed”, “angered” is a better word actually, to see that it was so full of idols.

One commentator described 1^st Century Athens as the world’s intellectual mecca – “filled with people who lived on lectures and who were kept alive by a diet of speculation, argument and discussion…” Paul, certainly no stranger to lively and spirited discussions – began arguing religion – specifically concerning Jesus and the resurrection - with Athenian Jews in the synagogue and then with devout people outside the synagogue and then with anyone and everyone who had ears to listen and tongues to wag in the marketplace. The Athenians, who were always intrigued by the newest trends in religious thinking, invited, or perhaps forced Paul, to give his spiel in front of the Aeropagus - the supreme council of Athens.

Athenian Idol – Why do we make God so small?

Paul begins his sermon by giving his listeners a backhanded compliment. Disassociating himself from the anger he previously felt regarding their polytheism, Paul says, “I see how religious you are in every way.” The Message puts it this way, “It is plain to see that you Athenians take your religion seriously. When I arrived here the other day, I was fascinated with all the shrines I came across. And then I found one inscribed, to the god nobody knows…”

It wasn’t necessarily the altars to the multiple Athenian pagan gods that gave Paul pause…it was the altar to the god the Athenians couldn’t even describe that got him all riled up. I couldn’t help but see myself as an Athenian in today’s scripture as I thought about how I’ve made my journey from a much more conservative expression of Christian faith to one that I believe to be more progressive. As my theology has evolved I’ve found myself saying to folks, “It is much easier for me to tell you about the God I don’t believe in, than to tell you about the God I do believe in.”

I can’t help but think that perhaps this happens to a lot of us. In our attempt to be thoughtful, religious intellectuals, as we strive to be more open and welcoming to other ideas and belief systems and ways of seeking God, we somehow lose confidence in our faith. It is as if we’re afraid to clearly articulate something definite about the God we DO believe in for fear that we will fall right back into the black and white expressions of faith that we have so adamantly rejected. At the end of the day, we are left worshipping a God we can’t really describe.

We blindly grope after a God that is really not that far away.

Quoting their own Greek poets, Paul points out to the Athenians that despite their best efforts to cover all their spiritual bases, “their manner of worship does not measure up even to the best religious and philosophical thinking of their own religious heritage..” In essence Paul says, Come on Athens – you all know this, you get this – you are the smartest, brightest, most religious people on the planet for goodness sake – and yet you cannot speak confidently about your God? Don’t let your fear of missing something keep you from connecting with the God who is bigger than anything your altars of stone or precious metals can contain. To quote the Beatles, there’s nothing you can know that isn’t known. Speak boldly about the God you believe in.

And yet…for me, perhaps for you too…that is easier said than done.

What can we really know? – Our God is so big!

Last weekend I attended a pastoral leadership gathering at Georgetown College along with Mark and Ron Sharp, chair of our deacons, and Bill Martin, our finance chair. In a small group discussion with some other pastors several folks complimented our congregation – affirming that we have stood boldly for historically Baptist principles and they celebrated that we have been a haven for diverse and progressive theology. We were grateful for that feedback of course, but during our discussion we noted that the shadow side to being a church as theologically diverse as ours is the inability to clearly articulate exactly who we are, what we stand for, and why we seek after God the way we do.

As I have thought about my own spiritual journey and our congregation over these past few weeks I am more and more convinced this is true. When I try to describe the uniqueness of our church for people, it is as if they can’t believe me. Surely, they say, there isn’t a Baptist church where all are welcome – gay and straight, single, divorced, partnered, married; black, white, American, international; tea party, green party, republican and democrat. They laugh and shake their head, convinced it must not be true. Somehow we’ve hidden our light under a bushel. The God that we know personally remains unknown in our community.

I challenge us to hear anew Paul’s words to the Athenians, perhaps these are words that we need to embrace and internalize for ourselves.

^24-29"The God who made the world and everything in it, this Master of sky and land, doesn't live in custom-made shrines or need the human race to run God’s errands, as if God couldn't take care of himself. Starting from scratch, God made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find God. God doesn't play hide-and-seek with us. God's not remote; God is near. We live and move and have our being in God!

Paul confronted the Athenians for worshipping unworthy gods, small gods that they thought could be contained in an idol or an image. Paul challenged the Athenians to live into their true religious selves. If you are going to be religious, be religious in a big way. If you are going to worship and adore something, worship and adore something inconceivably good and great!

Measuring Success

Each and every resource that I consulted regarding Paul’s speech in Athens suggests that this sermon was likely Paul’s biggest failure as a preacher and as a missionary. Unlike Rome, or Corinth no thriving church grew out of Paul’s leadership and spiritual mentorship. In fact some critics even suggest that the lack of controversy regarding Paul’s message is a clear indication of failure…if Paul had preached the crucified Christ and nothing else he would have at least stirred up a scandal, as if that in and of itself somehow indicates the Holy Spirit at work.

But the approach that Paul takes with the Athenians is unique, and I for one, appreciate it. Paul started where the Athenians were - affirming their intellect and religious diversity, and then he used reason and experience to get them to the next level – to realize that their vast knowledge and cultural uniqueness is rooted in the God who created them in all their glorious diversity. Paul encouraged the Athenians to recognize that they were failing to live up to their own high standards. And when all was said and done, Paul challenged the Athenians to repent.

Raymond Bailey, professor at Southern Seminary wrote in a journal published by the seminary in 1990 that “Paul fashioned his call for repentance to fit the situation. All persons need to repent but not always from the same misunderstandings, deficient knowledge or behavior.” Paul challenged the Athenians to repent from the ways in which they put God in a box despite their theological openness, to repent from the ways in which they believed that idols they created out of stone or metal were actually God.

I have felt convicted to repent from hiding behind what I do not know, from those uncertainties that keep me from proclaiming God’s infinite love, unlimited Grace and never-ending kindness to our community. Perhaps it is time for all of us to think carefully and critically about our own idols – those things we idolize as God which are really just fleeting shadows of God’s vastness and mere glimpses of God’s goodness.

Frederick Buechner says that “to repent is to come to your senses. It is not so much something you do as something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying, “I’m sorry,” than to the future and saying, “Wow!”

In that pastoral leadership meeting at Georgetown College last week we were encouraged to think about “why” we do things as a church. Why do we have the programs we have? Why do we have the staff and volunteers that we have? Why do we spend our resources the way we do? Hopefully this week you received in the mail the letter containing your small group information. This summer, in our small group conversations, we will have the opportunity to think deeply as a community of faith about why we do what we do, and why we are who we are here at Central Baptist Church.

I anticipate that we will walk away from those conversations convicted, seeking repentance for the ways in which we have failed to live up to our own highest religious standards, but more importantly I hope we come away empowered to speak boldly, confidently, lovingly about the God that we know to be true – the God that creates each of us, intimately, in God’s very own image; the God that welcomes every single one of us exactly as we are without question or hesitation; the God that proclaims life in the midst of death; the God that promotes health in the face of sickness; the God that brings light where the shadows fall; the God that gives voice to the voiceless and rest to the weary.

Kathleen Norris says that “Idolatry makes love impossible… when seen in the context of the great commandment that Jesus gives in the gospels, to love God with all your heart and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself, idolatry becomes more than the literal worshipping of graven images. All these loves are interrelated; self love is nothing if it doesn’t include the love of neighbor and of the God that created us in the divine image. A measure of balance in these objects of our devotion is the safeguard against idolatry…”

May we know, confidently and unwaveringly, that God is love, may we find the confidence to proclaim God’s love boldly and may we seek to love and worship God with all our hearts, souls and minds. Thanks be to God.

Wonderings

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 23:27:00 +0000

I observed from afar a man talking with a friend today.

My assumption is that he is in his late 40s early 50s. I also assume he is married as he was wearing a gold band around his left ring finger. He was wearing work clothes and a ball cap. His skin was tan and he walked/stood as if his body was a little bit broken down - probably from working hard nearly every day of his life.

What struck me most was the easiness of his smile and the way that it stretched all the way up into his eyes. His mannerisms appeared to be gentle and he seemed comfortable in his own skin.

As I watched him, I thought - I bet when he looks at his wife she knows he adores her. I bet when he tells someone he's gonna do something he does it, and with pleasure. I bet he's happiest in the middle of the woods, or on a boat in the middle of a lake and I bet the silence is his friend.

It was weird - watching him and wondering/imagining these things.

I did the same thing at the concert I went to last weekend.

When I wasn't singing my fool head off along with the songs I knew, I watched the members of the band. How the new guy looked so freaking happy he might just explode with joy. How another one of the guys smiled and laughed and looked as if he really couldn't believe he was (still) living the dream. How another was so totally focused on his part - like an nuclear engineer, or a research scientist - so intensely in his own world, making his part of the music come alive as if the whole show might fall to pieces if he used one ounce of energy to smile or laugh or breathe. And how yet another looked like he wished he could be anywhere but up on that stage - as if this "job" was sucking every.single.last.bit of life right out of him.

I wonder...

I wonder what people see when they look at me. Wonder what strangers observe when they watch me from afar as I talk to a friend. Wonder if they can see into my soul when I'm "working". I wonder if my smile really ever reaches my eyes.

Round Two...oh you are gonna hate me... lol

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 20:59:00 +0000

My brother's response to my response to his initial response:

Ok, so it has taken some time, but here comes my lengthy response to the last part of our dialogue. I really only have one other foundational point about the reason or need for the existence of hell. I’ll briefly explain it and then respond to some of the specific questions or hypotheses you posed in your last email.

I mentioned in my last email that people’s free choices are what make us truly human, and that in order for real love to exist we must have the option to choose otherwise. This is one reason why the universe we live in is the best of all possible universes. And I think we would agree that if God is really all He’s cracked up to be, then he would create the best possible universe. Thus, if we get rid of free choice, either in this life, (Calvinism) or at some point in the afterlife, then this universe would cease to be the best possible.

The second reason in favor of genuine free choice and the existence of hell, would be that God has created a world where a person can develop real moral character. I would say that a universe that allows for the development of genuine moral character, one which makes it possible for persons to become the immeasurably precious and even glorious beings that they sometimes do, is of greater value than any universe which does not.

I say all that because because if we look at the nature of moral development in people what we see is that people develop a character over their lifetime that is the product of their repeated choices. And while a person’s moral character is extremely pliable and flexible early in life, we know from experience both in ourselves and others, we become increasingly solidified in our behaviors and moral choices as we get older in this life. So much so, that a person who continually makes wrong or evil choices throughout their life, will come to a point where they cease to be able to differentiate right from wrong or good from evil. And on the other hand we see the opposite to be true as well. We also see in our own lives and the lives of others, that when a person continuously makes good or right choices, they develop an acute sensitivity to even the mildest of immoral behaviors or thoughts in their own personal life. The end point being that throughout our lives we become solidified into how we respond to true morality.

I think this is important to some of my responses later, because I think I understand one of the underlying themes to many of your questions to be: “Why wouldn’t an all loving, all-good God be eternally patient with a person until they were fully aware of His love and goodness?”

With all that said, here are some of my specific thoughts...

Do we inadvertently "choose" to go to hell because we do not choose God, or does God “send” us to hell as punishment - for our sins, for not choosing God, for not choosing Jesus? If God designed us to be completely free beings - then God "should" have no agency in whether or not we "go" to heaven (while I think the nature of what "heaven" is like and it's duration are very vague in scripture and many of the traditional views are likely wrong, I do think it exists...) or hell. So if there's a hell - whatever it might be - God doesn't "send" us there. I think we agree on that, right?

Yes, for the most part I would say we are in agreement on this with some minor adjustments from my point of view. God does not send us to hell, we choose an existence (or perhaps eventually annihilation) apart from God. However, to say that God “should” have no agency in whether or not we choose heaven is only valid if God’s agency is selective, limited, or irresistible.

What I would in fact say, is that while no person can come to God apart from God drawing them (This is what theologian John Wesley called God’s Prevenient Grace), God’s drawing is universal, his atonement is sufficient for all mankind, but it can be willfully resisted. So while God doesn’t choose to send anyone to hell, no one would choose God, apart from him choosing us all first.

The bigger questions (for me at least) are: If "hell" exists then what is it?

As far as what hell is, I think we would be mostly speculating. But the one thing I am certain about hell is that it is absent of God. It is this context that may account for some of the horrendous images we connect with hell (and I’m not saying I believe in all the images.) But what would you logically expect for a place that is void of an all-good, all-loving God? Complete and total selfishness, complete and total pride, complete and total weeping, complete and total loneliness. Those phrases can only begin to make sense in a reality that exists completely and totally apart from God.

And who, really, would ever choose it over God, especially if God is even a fraction of what I believe God to be?

Why someone would freely choose an existence apart from God if he really is so good and the alternative is so awful? I think there are many reasons. First and foremost, we must recognize spiritual forces of evil at work in the world. The scriptures tell us that “Satan” has blinded the eyes of unbelievers. No matter how good and loving God is, there are still spiritual forces of evil distorting God’s beauty for the vast majority of us. This is why I think ministry and proclaiming God’s goodness is so essential in our world. Secondly, to choose God is an act of Faith. Again, the Scriptures tell us that our senses cannot even begin to be able to comprehend God’s awesomeness. So by Faith we must trust in the invisible God. Now, God has gone to extreme lengths to make himself visible in our world (incarnation, to name the most obvious), but still, it easier to trust in myself and what I can see and control than to entrust my life to the invisible God.

One last thing about this. I don’t think anyone chooses an eternal existence apart from God with this in mind from the beginning. This would be like saying the person who first tries crystal meth does so with the intention of destroying their health, family, career, etc. Of course, no one would choose that from the outset. An existence apart from God starts small - perhaps something as small as eating a piece of fruit ;) - and like an addiction, solidifies over time.

So if, because of our complete human free will, there has to be the option that we can choose not to spend this life or eternal life with God, then there has to be some alternative which, I suppose we could understand as hell. My “hope” is that in this hell someone simply ceases “being”.

It wouldn’t argue with this. I don’t know if I am ready to be an annihilationist. But I don’t think there is any great error in this line of thinking. In fact, the one guy I mentioned, Greg Boyd, finds this viewpoint to be the most compelling. Hopefully, you’ve checked him out. I’ll put the link to his review of Rob Bell’s book. http://www.gregboyd.org/blog/rob-bell-is-not-a-universalist-and-i-actually-read-love-wins/

For me, based on my reading of Christian Scripture and my own personal experience – the foundation of God’s character is Love, not Justice, and God relates to us as Parent. As a Loving Parent the idea of any kind of punishment that is the equivalent of torture (temporal or eternal) is an impossibility.

Two things on this: I really think your hatred of these phrases comes from the idea that God is all controlling and is taking pleasure in these outcomes (Think John Edwards - SInners in the Hands of an Angry God). But, when we see punishment, torture, even the eternal nature of the consequences as the products of our own will and not God’s, then we have no one to blame but ourselves. Blaming God for the existence of hell is like blaming God for the existence of the Nazi concentration camps. Of course, God didn’t want the concentration camps to happen, but Hitler in his morally evil choices did. That’s not God’s fault, it’s Hitler’s.

Jesus, is, in my opinion, the embodiment of God’s Love in human form. If we Christians got rid of all our talk about punishment and damnation and election – and even the traditional understandings of Jesus’ blood and atonement on the cross (which makes God out to be a child sacrificing monster) - and focused on Jesus as Love incarnate then this whole conversation might take a drastically different tone.

Yes, I agree with most of this, except God as a child sacrificing monster. It is important to not separate or over-personify the nature of the Trinity. Of course, no good parent would sacrifice their child for a cause or even another person. Yet without question, a good and loving parent would sacrifice their own life for their child’s. I would give my life in a second for James, as I’m certain you would do for Anderson. This is why the Scriptures tell us that there is no greater love than self sacrificially giving your life for another. This is also why the cross and the blood are so powerful, because they are the demonstrations of God loving us in the greatest possible way.

My hope is that when we die we will come face to face (metaphorically or literally or whatever) with God. And we will know – utterly, completely, wholeheartedly – exactly how very loved we are and have always been. We will see ourselves - for the very first time - as God sees us. And we will, finally, be made whole. You, me, Hitler, Mother Theresa, Ghandi, terrorists, racists, child molesters, Martin Luther King, Jr., James, Anderson, the kid who massacred the folks at Virginia Tech in 2007, (which, by the way was the incident that solidified for me my disbelief in hell…)

And in knowing ourselves fully as God knows us – we, each and every one of us – will be redeemed and we will choose Love, for eternity.

I guess…somehow…there may still be someone who can’t accept it….and then, well, I just don’t know…

But my overwhelming hope is that no one will choose against it…and therefore there’s no need for hell - whatever we might imagine it to be.

I think your hope here is a great hope. As Erwin McManus says, “I have no desire for anybody to go to hell, and if I someday in heaven I find that I am wrong about the existence of hell and everybody ‘get’s in’, that’s great.” But I think the problem with this hope is that just like the horrendous imagery of the traditional view of hell, it is mostly speculative. And more problematic for me, is that it flies in the face of what I was saying in the beginning about how our choices develop and eventually solidify our moral character.

Just to affirm your hope, and in my opinion the hope of Scripture as well, nobody will be in hell who doesn’t want to be. We need to get rid of the image of the person, who is begging and pleading to spend eternity with God and yet God is refusing him. That will not be the case.

The necessity of a hell or annihilation or whatever, is that a person has continually throughout their life refused God’s love and has developed a moral character that is so completely and solidly self righteous or prideful that even if they were invited into a loving relationship with God for all eternity they would forever refuse.

Ok sister, if you have made it this far through my ramblings you are truly a champ. I have really appreciated this discussion, it has really challenged me. I would love to here some of your thoughts in response but you, by no means, have to respond to everything in detail, or anything for that matter.

I also think it is great, as you said in your blog, that we can have these real discussions. It does appear that both of us are pretty set in our viewpoints, so it my be unrealistic to think that either of us would change our viewpoints completely. But I think the beautiful thing and the most important thing is that we’ve sincerely and lovingly tried to articulate our perspective while also trying to understand the other person on their own terms. That is a very cool thing!

Love always your little bro,

Dusty

The One in Which I Email My Brother Back (and ramble on and on) About Hell

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 20:56:00 +0000

If you missed The One in Which My Brother Emails Me About Hell, you can find it here:

from	Jessica Margrave Schirm
to		dusty margrave
date		Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 7:23 PM
subject		Re: @jaybakker, 3/12/11 12:42 PM

Ahhh...excellent discourse little brother!

I just finished reading Jay Bakker's Fall to Grace. I'm hoping to have some time to write a review of it for Pop Theology soon. I tweeted about reading it the other day and Jay Bakker started following me on twitter - I wasn't following him first, mind you, so it made me a little giddy.

The link in Jay's tweet is to the blog of a guy who is a UMC minister and divinity school student at Duke.

Like you, I agreed with his motives and - of course you know this already - I agree with most all of his conclusions.

BUT/AND...

I agree with most of your thoughts too. The "reverse-Calvanist" problem is indeed the glaring flaw in Christian Universalism, or Universalism in general...

I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm so much of a geek about this that it keeps me up at night thinking and wondering and worrying about it.

So, piece by piece:

Dusty wrote: Belief, the ability to think rationally and make free choices is what makes us truly human.

I agree. Making free choices is what makes us truly human.

Dusty wrote: The complaint against the Calvinist god is that he is this uncaring, judgmental god who overrides the human will and arbitrarily picks some for heaven and some for hell. The argument this pastor makes has gotten rid of the uncaring, judgmental, hell sending god, which I think comes from good motives, but he still has a god that is just as fatalistic as the Calvinist god.

As I said before - this is the glaring problem with the whole damn argument...

Dusty wrote: The solution to evil fatalism is not good fatalism it is non-fatalism. While I think the nature of what "hell" is like and it's duration are very vague in scripture and many of the traditional views are likely wrong, I do think it exists. :(

And here is where we need to dig a little deeper.

The unfortunate thing about our cultural context and our religious language is that the very word "Hell" is inescapably emotionally charged and loaded with disastrous imagery. Fire, Torture, Punishment, Screaming, Suffering, Eternal - think concentration camps on steroids. For me to agree that there's any kind of "hell" at all - it CAN'T be this - because anything/anyone that would "allow" that, even for the vilest offender, is NOT God or god. I'll gladly exchange my understanding of/commitment to human free will if it means that not one person has to endure anything like that. More on what I think "hell" might be...if it necessarily must exist...in a bit.

The bigger questions (for me at least) are: If "hell" exists then what is it? And who, really, would ever choose it over God, especially if God is even a fraction of what I/we believe God to be? (Maybe this will offer some answers your two questions from before - If I don't want to spend eternity with god, why do I have to? Why is a god who has to override the human spirit to get people to love him better than a god who pursues, loves, and dies so that people would freely choose to love him back?)

So if, because of our complete human free will, there has to be the option that we can choose not to spend this life or eternal life with God, then there has to be some alternative which, I suppose we could understand as hell. My “hope” is that in this hell someone simply ceases “being”. Annihilation is the term typically thrown around with regard to this theology, I suppose – and when we use it to mean “to make into nothing” I guess I am ok with that, but like all the verbal baggage that Hell brings along with it, annihilation has it’s own share of problems – often characterized as destruction or obliteration – which still seems too violent to be associated with God as I understand God to be...but I don’t know what else to do with it.

Maybe even more urgent than understanding what “hell” is like, if it must exist, is to think about the nature of a God that can co-exist with “hell” in any form. I recently read a blog post by Tony Jones that points to another view of Christian Universalism which allows for God – in God’s Justice – to punish folks in more traditional understanding of hell for our actions/choices, but in the end ultimately redeems every single soul. (Again, this begs the question of freedom.)

For me, based on my reading of Christian Scripture and my own personal experience – I understand the foundation of God’s character is Love, not Justice - although I do think this is part of who/what God is, and God relates to us as Parent. As a Loving Parent the idea of any kind of punishment that is the equivalent of torture (temporal or eternal) is an impossibility (side note: this is also why I want to pull a Thomas Jefferson and snip the Flood Narrative, et al, right out of our sacred texts – Loving Mother’s do not drown their kids in the bathtub).

[Side side note: I know that last statement is extreme hyperbole...I am happy to hash out that theology at a later date and time.]

In my estimation the “problem” with our human existence, the root of sin if you will, is our failure to understand how completely and lavishly God loves us. Our incapacity to comprehend how worthy, as part of God’s good creation, we are of that Love. Our inability to receive God’s love leads to our inability to embody Love with one another which leads to our own personal self-destruction as well as systemic sin and global catastrophes such as the holocaust and nuclear war.

Jesus, is, in my opinion, the embodiment of God’s Love in human form. If we Christians got rid of all our talk about punishment and damnation and election – and maybe even the traditional understandings of Jesus’ blood and atonement on the cross (again what Loving Parent willingly sacrifices their child for anyone?) and instead focused on Jesus as Love Incarnate then this whole conversation might take a drastically different tone.

Jesus, as Love Incarnate, teaches that if we could finally realize how much God loves us, then we could in turn learn how to fully love ourselves and others and God.

But somehow we’ve managed to screw that up too…

And instead we use Jesus as a measuring stick of who is in or who is out and spend a whole lot of energy imagining how amazing Heaven is for those who are in and how horrific Hell is for those who aren’t.

My hope is that if somehow we can dig through the muck that we’ve made of the Jesus story, if we can find the hope that comes from knowing God as Love then we will, in our freedom, choose God whole-heartedly, unashamedly in THIS lifetime and our lives, our relationships and our world will be changed as a result.

But for those of us who can’t, or won’t, or haven’t had a chance in this life…

Well…

My hope is that when we die we will come face to face (metaphorically or literally or whatever) with God. And we will know – utterly, completely, wholeheartedly – exactly how very loved we are and have always been. We will see ourselves - for the very first time - as God sees us...

And we will, finally, be made whole.

You, me, Hitler, Mother Theresa, Ghandi, terrorists, racists, child molesters, Martin Luther King, Jr., James, Anderson, the kid who massacred the folks at Virginia Tech in 2007, (which, by the way was the incident that solidified for me my disbelief in hell…)

And in knowing ourselves fully as God knows us – we, each and every one of us – will be redeemed.

We will choose Love, for eternity.

I guess…somehow…there may still be someone who can’t accept it….and then, well, I just don’t know…

But my overwhelming hope is that no one will choose against it…and therefore there’s no need for hell - whatever we might imagine it to be.

______________________________________________________________________

I haven't heard back from Dusty yet...when/if I do I'll post it.

I am well aware that my conclusions/beliefs are not orthodox. I'm ok with that.

I am also well aware that my "hope" for the fate.of.every.single.person.who.ever.lived is definitely best viewed through rose-colored lenses. I'm ok with that too.

In the end...I'm with Rob.

Love Wins.

_______________________________________________________________________

(I actually forgot to include any kind of closure in my original email - so I'm doing it now...)

Love you little brother! :-)

Jess

The One in Which My Brother Emails Me About Hell

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 23:07:00 +0000

If you are on Twitter and you follow me, or if you follow any other contemporary Christian thinkers who are part of the emergent church movement, or the progressive church, or even if you follow most of the well-known conservative Christian thinkers - then you are likely aware of the BUZZ! DRAMA! INSANITY! that has surrounded @realrobbell's (Rob Bell) new book Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Has Ever Lived.

Now, from this flurry of activity you would think that Rob Bell was the first person to ever allude to the idea that there might not be a hell. The twitter-versy lasted days...DAYS I tell you...and in the Twitterverse that might as well be DECADES. Folks are still tweeting about it, rehashing it, condemning it, celebrating it, blogging about it (including me). Hell (pun intended), for all I know Rob Bell might still be a trending topic - which is a modern day miracle in and of itself, well, unless of course you are Justin Beiber.

Having stated before that I stopped believing in Hell a while ago, this conversation has been both captivating and entertaining for me. I've loved reading what so many folks, famous or otherwise, have had to say about Heaven and Hell and Rob Bell and the.fate.of.every.person.who.has.ever.lived. Mind you the book was not even released when all this started...and so much of the back and forth was rooted in speculation and grounded in nothing more than a few sound bites from the book's promotional video which you can watch here:

Needless to say people are excited and energized and passionate about hell right now (at least until something else "new" and sensational comes along).

As is my custom, I often re-tweet things from some of the folks I follow on twitter, especially if it links to an article, or blog post, etc that I find particularly interesting.

On Saturday I retweeted this:

Jay Bakker (@jaybakker)
3/12/11 12:42 PM
Good Read: What I Lost Losing Hell bit.ly/h5oQxf What do you think?

And then Matt and I went to a matinée at the cheap theater. (We saw The Fighter. It was good.
A captivating portrayal by Christian Bale of the Hell on Earth that is drug addiction...)

When we came out of the theater I checked my email on my phone (because I'm addicted to social networking and it's impressive that I sat through a whole movie without looking at my phone, NOT EVEN ONE TIME...) and found the following email from my brother, Dusty, waiting for me:

from	dusty margrave
to		jessie schirm
date		Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 3:59 PM
subject		@jaybakker, 3/12/11 12:42 PM

I think I agree with a lot of his motives but not his conclusions. The state of current mainstream christianity that leads to things like the rob bell twitter controversy and piper's response saddens me.

I think I've shared my perspective on this with you before but here goes again. In jay's attempt to show infinite value for the human spirit he has actually devalued it. Belief, the ability to think rationally and make free choices is what makes us truly human. The complaint against the Calvinist god is that he is this uncaring, judgmental god who overrides the human will and arbitrarily picks some for heaven and some for hell. The argument this pastor makes has gotten rid of the uncaring, judgmental, hell sending god, which I think comes from good motives, but he still has a god that is just as fatalistic as the Calvinist god. The solution to evil fatalism is not good fatalism it is non-fatalism. While I think the nature of what "hell" is like and it's duration are very vague in scripture and many of the traditional views are likely wrong, I do think it exists. :(

Here's a couple questions that I think I asked before:

If I don't want to spend eternity with god, why do I have to?

Why is a god who has to override the human spirit to get people to love him better than a god who pursues, loves, and dies so that people would freely choose to love him back?

Ok that's what I think. Lol

I really think the best resources on this are Greg boyd and Erwin McManus. Greg Boyd's blog and essays are great and you would agree with a ton of what he says. So educated.

McManus' sermons entitled "is there a hell?" and "is god in my future?" are both extremely compassionate and well spoken.

Love you big sis! ;),

Dusty

If you know me you know that this email made.my.whole.weekend.

I love my brother.

I love talking with my brother about theology.

It makes me all tingly inside to think that our relationship is deep enough to hash these things out in a respectful and meaningful way.

It makes me happy that we can go weeks without seeing each other, or speaking to one another in any sort of meaningful way and then fall right back into step with a conversation along these lines.

I love that our family, in general, is not particularly religious - and we all go in different directions theologically on just about every issue (except the Beatles) - and yet we aren't afraid to go head to head when our own personal theologies bump up against one another.

Having this conversation with my brother is way more interesting and personal for me than having it with strangers via twitter.

So I spent the rest of Saturday evening working on my reply. I wrote, I deleted, I edited, I deleted, I re-worded...and somehow I just couldn't get it right. So I sent Dusty a text promising that I'd have my reply to him the next day and asking for his permission to blog about this. (He said I could.) After some sleep and some alone time on Sunday I managed to hack out an ENTIRELY too long reflection on what I think hell may or may not be.

I'll post that for you soon.

Bet ya can't wait...

I spend a lot of time in my car...(part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 22:35:00 +0000

So, a few hours after I heard the Market Place interview with the Shetterly-Davis family, I found myself captivated by an interview on Fresh Air with Jennifer Wright Knust, Assistant Professor of New Testament and Christian Origens at Boston University. It wasn't so much the content of the interview that intrigued me, but rather Jennifer's credentials - bible scholar, ordained Baptist pastor, religion professor, author.

The interview itself was fine. Professor Knust has a new book out Unprotected Texts: The Bible's Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire and the majority of the interview was about what the Bible does or doesn't say about marriage, sexuality, and sexual morality as it relates to our culture. It's worth listening to, or reading if you have the time. I thought Terry Gross focused too much on the debate about gay marriage, which Professor Knust repeatedly said was not the focus of her text - but as that is the hot button, energy laden subject when it comes to the Bible and Sexuality these days, I guess it makes sense to dwell there. Professor Knust did a fine job in a short amount of time making it clear that the Bible's teachings on sexuality are inconsistent and disconnected from our contemporary culture in ways much broader than gay marriage regardless.

Where my mind wandered during the interview, though, was how deeply I longed to walk in Professor Knust's shoes. I don't know anything about her personally. This Fresh Air interview was the first time I'd ever heard her name. I've never read her books; I know nothing of her research; I have no impressions of her as a professor or as a Baptist minister. What I do know is that last night as I listened to her speak, as I heard her identified as scholar, ordained minister, professor...I felt an ache in my heart to someday have those same things said about me before an interview on NPR.

I know it is egotistical and selfish and arrogant of me to even say that...

I mean, I suppose we all want to be important. We want to be known. We want to accomplish something that someone takes note of. But it still feels wrong somehow to claim it.

But when I heard this interview I thought, this could be me someday. I could really write a book that someone cared enough about to discuss on the air. I could become a professor of religion someplace, someday...

I guess I haven't really given up on that "dream" after all.

It was a funny juxtaposition of feelings last night. In one moment feeling so beaten down by the economy, feeling like there's no way I'll ever get to where I had always dreamed I might someday be - scholar, author, professor - that I wanted to cry. And then just a few hours later hearing this brief interview and feeling so inspired, so encouraged to keep reaching, to make it happen.

I suppose if all those things never happen, I'll be able to look back on my life and view it with contented satisfaction. I'm educated; I'm a mother to an amazing child; I'm married to a supportive spouse; I'm an ordained Baptist minister; I'm earning a living doing something that I enjoy...

But I really, really hope that there's still enough room in the American Dream for me to do just a little bit more...

I spend a lot of time in my car...(part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 03:03:00 +0000

In general I spend my work day driving around Central Kentucky providing pastoral care to my patients in their homes and back and forth to church. Hence I have an intimate relationship with my car, with gas stations all over town and with my local public radio station. That daily reality leads to multiple tweets about gas station restrooms, the price of unleaded, requests for songs I want to hear on Rock & Roots and interesting NPR/American Public Media programs that make me think twice about something.

Tonight as I listened to Market Place and Fresh Air (while driving around making pastoral care visits for my church job) I heard two segments that hit home with me for two totally different reasons.

Part One: A family struggling, traveling and surviving in the Great Recession.

If you follow the link you can read the transcript of the interview and listen to the show in full. The gist of the story is how Caitlin Shetterly, her husband Dan Davis and their young family have suffered (vocationally and financially) during the Great Recession and have also grown (personally and emotionally) as a result. Caitlin and Dan's tale captivated me - precisely because I could easily see Matt and I in this same position. Though our story is significantly different, I would say that our rose-colored glasses have been sufficiently scuffed and scratched and pretty much discarded as the last 3-4 years have left us wondering what the heck has happened to our dreams and goals much like the Shetterly-Davis'.

This part of the interview struck me most profoundly:

RYSSDAL: So there you are, first week of January 2009, you have a brand new baby, but your husband's jobs have all been canceled; he's getting no contracting, no freelancing. The whole country is literally thinking that this is it, because we've had the crash in the fall of the previous year. What was going through your mind?

SHETTERLY: What was going through my mind? I mean, I was angry. I think many of us, many people in my generation anyway -- I can't speak for say, my grandparents' generation who went through the Depression -- but we've grown up believing that if we work hard and strive for our dreams, they will come true. And I believed that.

RYSSDAL: Past tense, you're speaking in the past tense. "I believed that."

SHETTERLY: Yeah, I did believe that. Now I don't believe it anymore. I don't know that just hard work makes it. I don't know, I think a lot of luck makes it.

I can certainly empathize with Shetterly's anger and disbelief. My eyes flooded with tears as she repeated, "Yeah, I did believe that. Now I don't believe it anymore." For our generation hard work, multiple advanced degrees, great GPA's, excellent references...it simply isn't enough. Struggling to make ends meet, to pay back our student loans and mortgages, to create a good life for our kids and to find some sense of "self" in connection with our vocations (or lack thereof)...well, it's exhausting. I can honestly say that I have no expectation to ever be able to "retire". I guess it's a good thing that I enjoy my work, even if it'll never pay much, because I'm gonna be doing it for a long, long time.

What are your thoughts? Are you in the same boat? Have you also stopped believing in the American Dream or given up on the idea that if you just work hard enough you'll make it?

(Stay tuned for Part 2...)

Things that make me smile...

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 22:50:00 +0000

Wanted to share a few things that have made me smile over the past few weeks...

Came downstairs one night last week to find this, my little budding reader..

A list of God's attributes as compiled by my Sunday School class (2nd-5th graders).

I am so proud of these incredibly wise and thoughtful kids.

This is our cat. His official name is Crookshanks (after the cat in Harry Potter) but we normally just call him kitty cat. I rescued him and his litter mates after they were abandoned by their momma cat in the summer of 2007. The kittens were just days old at the time and needed lots of attention. I was up all hours of the night bottle feeding them and trying to keep them alive. All the other kittens died and this one was on the brink of death. At the time Anderson was only 6 months old and I was still nursing him. I got the bright idea to start feeding the kitten breast milk along with the powdered cat formula and wouldn't you know it, he survived. So, this cat might as well be flesh of my flesh. Problem is, he'e never been very friendly. Wouldn't ever snuggle. Would tolerate a petting occasionally, but would bite you once he tired of it. All of the sudden, he's taken a turn towards kindness and these pictures are from the first time in 3 years that he climbed into my lap and let me snuggle him. The dog in the picture is Allie. When I was painstakingly trying to keep the kittens alive all those years ago, Allie helped me play momma cat and did all the grooming for the kittens, licking them and playing with them. She and the cat are connected at the hip...literally!

Isn't that the cutest darn Dragon Trainer you've ever seen?

Part of a $20 bouquet of fresh flowers that I got on sale for $4.

It's amazing how much better things feel when there are fresh flowers in the house.

I preached twice in February, once right before my cruise and the weekend right after I got back. The pictures below are from when I was preparing. Seriously how many computers does it take to write a sermon these days? I was editing on my sermon one night while sitting in bed with Anderson watching a movie - great parenting, right? He decided that he needed to pull out his "laptop" and write a sermon also. Anderson sat through the services both times and watched Mommy preach. I thought it would be distracting for me, but actually I felt even more empowered. Proud that my son can see his mom doing what I was called to do and see me supported by the Baptist churches that have invited me to preach.

Finally, an up close snapshot of one of the bookshelves in my church office. You'll see the Barenaked Ladies Snacktime children's book, a retelling of Noah's Ark by Sting called Rock Steady, a book of nature focused children's prayers, the Harry Potter Series, Stephen King's Dark Tower series, a children's book based on John Lennon's life and the word Imagine, and some Greek textbooks. This pretty much tells you everything you need to know about me theologically and ministerially.

Weekend Wanderings: What you want...

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 23:16:00 +0000

I've been kinda down in the dumps for the past few weeks. I'm sure it has to do with a combination of getting home from the cruise and not having much to look forward to; dreary - seemingly never ending - winter weather; getting sick; never having enough money and having way too much debt; wanting to plan for a million things i.e. having another baby, getting a ph.d or applying for a CPE supervisory residency, Matt getting a job he likes and getting a ph.d - and yet feeling like those are all impossibilities at this point...I could go on...

I started the New Year off resolving to be more thankful...and now it seems all I can think of are my frustrations. I'm wearing myself out with it honestly...

Anyway...all of that leads into this...

One of the musical gems that I discovered on the cruise is Luke Reynolds. He's a new addition to Guster - a multi-instrumentalist - and has an impressive solo career for being 31 and basically doing it all on his own. Prior to Guster he had his own band Blue Merle (which WUKY plays often, but I never seem to be able to hear) and a project called Pictures and Sound. Most recently he put out an independent EP called Maps which I simply can't get enough of. Every single song resonates with me in a different way - but the one that has spoken most to my recent bout of melancholy is What You Want. Take a listen...

What You Want from Luke Reynolds on Vimeo.

I love that the song is simple. The melody is simple. The words are simple.

But when I listen closely, everything about it feels profound.

Nothing in my life is coming to an end...it's just that right now the future feels murky rather than bright.

For most of you (all 19 or 20 of my dear readers) you know me well enough to know that this idea of everything being part of a bigger "plan" typically falls outside of my world view...but it's a comforting idea...knowing that someday, hopefully, I'll look back and these difficult days will feel like a blessing.

Anyway...you call follow Luke (@Lukeguster) and Guster (@Guster) on twitter.
You can see Guster in Cincinnati at Bogarts on April 2nd.
And you can listen to the entire Maps EP on Luke's blog

Enjoy!

Say the Word...

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:37:00 +0000

Say the Word…

Matthew 5:38-48

Allow me to begin by saying thank you, sincerely, for welcoming me to Lyndon Baptist Church today in celebration of the Baptist Women in Ministry’s Martha Stearns Marshall Month of Preaching. What feels like many years ago now, during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college, I was assigned to my first paying ministry position working with the youth at Clifton Baptist Church under the mentorship of Dr. Holladay. It was a transformational experience for me, and solidified the call that I’d felt on my life. Dr. Holladay’s encouragement, and unwavering support was motivation for me to stay the course and to live into my calling as a Baptist woman in ministry. I’m grateful that our paths have yet again crossed in this moment of time and I’m honored to explore God’s word with you today.

And…back to the Sermon on the Mount

You know, all too well now perhaps, that for the past several weeks we’ve been focusing our attention on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Matthew’s version of these teachings locates Jesus on a mountain top, identifying him as a new Moses – just as Moses went up on the mountain to receive the ten commandments, so now Jesus is up on a mountain re-interpreting, in challenging and complicated new ways, this ancient law for all those gathered to listen. To call today’s gospel lesson challenging and complicated is a gross understatement to say the least. In these ten short verses Jesus speaks radically about resisting violence, embracing love and embodying perfection. Much like the beatitudes that we explored a few short weeks ago - these verses are so familiar we nearly know them by heart, or at least we think we do. And we think we know what they mean, or at least we pretend we do. But I hope that as we re-listen to Jesus’ words and reflect together today that we will hear these mandates in new and life-giving ways.

Resisting Violence, Even when it is Justified

For my job as a chaplain with Hospice of the Bluegrass I drive all over Fayette and Jessamine counties, visiting my patients and providing pastoral care in their homes. This means that I spend an extraordinary amount of time in my car. If you are familiar with Lexington you’ll know that New Circle Road is really the only way to get anywhere efficiently. It is a busy road and people often drive too fast. Every so often the Fayette County police turn out in droves all over New Circle Road, targeting folks with their radar guns and zooming around on their motorcycles writing speeding tickets left and right. This past Friday was one of those days. Every time I rounded a bend there was another police motorbike pulling someone over. Needless to say I was overly cautious with my speed that day.

As I was traveling from one patient’s home to the next, a person in a huge SUV began riding my bumper a little too closely for comfort. There was really no room for me to switch lanes to get out of his or her way, and with the abundance of police officers and the shortage of funds in our bank account it wasn’t worth the risk of a speeding ticket for me to drive faster to appease this person. I attempted to practice patience until I was able to safely change lanes and then breathed out a prayer something to the effect of, “I really hope you get a speeding ticket, buddy!” as the driver roared past me.

As I’d spent most of the week chewing over our scripture passage for today, I immediately caught what I’d just done – I hung my head and laughed at myself for failing Jesus so astoundingly over something so ridiculous. When I was able, I posted to facebook:

“Jesus said we should love & pray for our enemies. Pretty sure my praying that the guy riding my bumper will get a ticket isn't what he meant.”

The comments from my friends were immediate and varied – but most fell into the camp that this kind of “tough love” was likely justified, after all a speeding ticket just might help this person “learn a lesson” that they desperately needed to learn. Although it is a silly example, my primal urge for revenge against that tail-gaiting driver – you inconvenienced me so I wish inconvenience upon you – is exactly what Jesus is preaching against. Our hearts are so hard…

Eugene Peterson’s scriptural paraphrase The Message interprets the first few verses of our gospel lesson this way:

Here’s another old saying that deserves a second look: ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” Is that going to get us anywhere? Here’s what I propose: ‘Don’t hit back at all.’ If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues you for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.

Even now these paraphrased words come crashing down around us like a ton of bricks. Certainly we know we aren’t supposed to be the aggressor – striking out first, or taking advantage of someone – but what about our self-respect, what about defending ourselves, what about justice? Indeed we are far more comfortable with "eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe" as the original law in Exodus states. One commentator clearly articulates that, “An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth was a not a prescription to foster vengeance – quite the opposite it was a way to provide the ancient Jewish judicial system with a formula for establishing an appropriate punishment for a crime…” Our American judicial system remains based on these same principles…you get what you deserve, nothing more and hopefully nothing less.

The trouble in Jesus’ time, and unfortunately the trouble that carries over into our own day and age, “…is that a law designed to limit retaliation and punish fairly can be appealed to as justification for vindictiveness.” If someone wrongs us, we somehow believe that we are justified in giving that wrong right back, hopefully just as good as we got.

My spouse, Matt, and I have a 4 year old son Anderson. Anderson attends childcare at our church during the week while Matt and I work. A few weeks ago Anderson reported that one of his friends hit him and Anderson acknowledged that he’d hit the child back. Usually both kids involved in an altercation get a time out, but in this instance Anderson reported that his teacher had told him that he wasn’t in trouble because the other kid had hit him first. It is such a difficult position to be in as a parent. How do I teach my 4 year old to turn the other cheek?

This situation was likely just a pre-naptime disagreement over a toy. But aren’t we all far too familiar with the recent stories about beautiful young people who have been bullied to the point of desperation for being gay, or weak, or different, children who have lost all hope and have ultimately taken their own lives. Perhaps they had no power to strike back at their enemy and instead attacked their own selves to the point of death. It is heartbreaking and makes sense to want to see these bullies punished.

But Jesus’ point is clear, violence – towards others or towards one’s own self – destroys everyone involved. Love is the only way to changes hearts. So as a parent, I take a deep breath and I say again to Anderson, “It is never ok to hit, even if someone hits you first. Jesus teaches us to love and pray for the people who want to hurt us,” knowing full well that’s a lesson I’ll likely never learn truly myself.

If Jesus’ challenge to us stopped here – stopped with the admonition to be willing to go the extra mile, naked if we have to, so as not to act vengefully towards someone who persecutes us – it would be tough enough, but doable. Indeed we’ve seen our own country during the civil rights movement and countries around the world like Egypt – transformed by non-violent resistance. But he doesn’t stop here...

Indiscriminate Love

⁴³“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. ⁴⁶For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? ⁴⁷And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?⁴⁸Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

“Someone once said that everything Jesus taught can be found somewhere in the prophets--with one exception: love of enemies. That was one teaching of Jesus that was indisputably new--and indisputably counter-intuitive...”

One commentator notes, “[Jesus’ command to] love your enemies is an unequivocal and startling demand…The ancient world was chasmed by hatreds. Thus, for example, the story of the good Samaritan must have seemed subversive folly to those who first heard it. Jesus would have no fences around the word neighbor. To the Christian the world neighbor is as wide as [human]kind…The demand of Christ is not that we resolve to like everybody, but rather that we act in good will from God toward those we like and those we do not like. There is something new in a love whereby a person oppressed by a traitorous taxgatherer acts with generous good will toward his oppressor.”

In a world where we fail over and over again to fully love even those for whom it should be easy for us to love – our friends, our family, our fellow citizens – what does it mean to love an enemy?

It means: “Showing good will towards all people, with no other strategy or ulterior motive.”

It means: “Replacing self-interest with self-sacrifice as the fundamental basis of ethics.”

It means: “Being willing to work for someone’s well-being even if it means sacrificing our own well-being to that end, even if it means sometimes just leaving them alone.”

It means: “Acting with conduct that is not conditioned or determined by kinship (whether ethnic, social or religious) or by reciprocity.”

It means: “Praying that our enemies will receive God’s very best.”

It is clearly no small task – and perhaps we are tempted to just brush this teaching aside like we do so many others – but the consequences are far too high to casually dismiss Jesus’ command to love our enemies. Our very identities as children of God are at stake.

Perhaps loving one’s enemies may have at one time meant to welcome, to entertain, or to be kind or civil to those who stood against us. But for Jesus, loving our enemies means loving them just as God loves all of humanity. It is a benevolent loving kindness which seeks the material and spiritual good of others. Such love is the supreme test of our character as religious people. This love is to be extended to enemies and persecutors, for such is God’s way of dealing with those who neglect [God], and insult [God], and do wrong to [God’s] other children.

Anne Lamott, in a recent novel called Imperfect Birds describes God’s love for us like this:

"You were loved because God loves, period. God loved you, and everyone, not because you believed certain things, but because you were a mess, and lonely, and His or Her child. God loved you no matter how crazy you felt on the inside, no matter what a fake you were; always, even in your current condition, even before coffee. God loves you crazily..."

Certainly Jesus isn’t saying that we are really expected to love others as God loves us…unconditionally, unwaveringly, universally…is he? What about that tough love? What about lessons that need to be learned? What about sin? What about the murderers and rapists and child molesters, the Nazi’s, and slave masters and the terrorists? Those offenses are more than a backhand across the face, or being sued for your coat. Are we to love them, perfectly, as God loves them, too?

⁴⁸Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

“…[This idea of perfect love] does not refer to some sort of state or condition of sinless perfection; it is instead a form of conduct that only arises out of a new and whole relationship with God. To be perfect here means to love in the same indiscriminate way that God loves.”

One theologian commented: “Are we, frail dust, to be perfect – we beset by such perversity that we burn our fingers a hundred times in the same fire; we, tormented by a guilty past? It seems like demanding higher mathematics from a child who has not yet master the “two-times” table. But the saying is in the spirit of this whole passage, and Jesus does not mock us….the whole sermon traces perfection…Plainly Jesus is bidding us press on into God’s light…Thus in Christ there must be no limit to friendship, and kindness should never be fractional. It is all or nothing…Just as plainly Jesus here speaks his faith in our human nature. He was realistic; no one saw with such clear eyes the devilishness in [humans]…But no one believed more staunchly in that seed in us which, given into God’s care and power, can grow into eternal life.”

In my family of origin there is little else more sacred than The Beatles. The Beatles provide the soundtrack for each of the high holy times in our family’s history – my wedding, my brother’s wedding, my ordination service, the birth of our children…someday they will provide the backdrop for the grief at our funerals. As I read and re-read this passage the lyrics to The Word from the Rubber Soul album swirled through my mind.

Say the word and you’ll be free;

Say the word and be like me;

Say the word I’m thinking of;

Have you heard the word is love?

This catchy little pop tune perhaps seems ill-fitting for the heaviness and urgency of Jesus’ commands – but the message strikes me as similar. When we learn how to love – perfectly as God loves – we are set free. Free from victimization, free from shame, despair and oppression, free from anger and hatred and vengeance, free from being in or out, free from being a sinner or a saint or any other label we might be stuck with. It is only through learning how to love and be loved, particularly learning how to love our enemies, that we truly become like God. They will know we are Christians by our love.

My most beloved religious thinker of the twentieth and twenty-first century is Frederick Buechner. If I am ever at a loss for words, which is rare, and need a hand articulating my thoughts on an issue – I turn to Buechner for guidance. As we leave this place to ponder what it means to be loved unconditionally, as we open our eyes to all of the ways we might better love our enemies, as we seek to be perfect as God is perfect, I’ll close today with Buechner’s reflections on Love from his book of daily meditations called Listening to Your Life.

The love for equals is a human thing – of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles

The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing – the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.

The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing – to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints.

And then there is the love for the enemy – love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.

Resources:

Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking

Ann Lamott, Imperfect Birds

The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Frank E. Gaebelein Gen Ed; Matthew, Mark, Luke

The Intepreter's Bible; George Arthur Buttrick, et al; New Testament Artilces, Matthew, Mark

Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary, Ben Witherington III, Matthew

Paradoxical Happiness

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 03:30:00 +0000

Paradoxical Happiness

Matthew 5:1-12; Micah 6: 1-8

Our Scriptures for today were chosen for us by the Lectionary – a three year collection of passages selected for each Sunday of the year that Christians use as a guide for worship and spiritual reflection. This weekend in houses of worship all over the world there are groups of believers just like us pondering these same holy words. I will confess that when I first saw the passages for today I was more than a little intimidated. In fact I posed the question to several of my other minister friends, “Is there anything new under the sun to say about Micah 6:8 and The Beatitudes?”

These verses are so familiar – we nearly know them by heart, or at least we think we do. And we think we know what they mean, or at least we pretend we do. I suppose preachers all over the world hung their heads this week as they pondered where to go and what to do with these verses that are just a little too close for comfort – or at least I hope they did…makes me feel a little better anyway. Ben Witherington III, a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary and author of commentary on Matthew’s gospel, puts it this way: “The Beatitudes have been over-interpreted for so long it is hard to peel back the excess verbiage of commentators and get back to the essence of the material…”

So let’s try to peel back some of that excess, shall we?

The Beatitudes are the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which continues for the next two chapters in Matthew’s Gospel. This collection of Jesus’ teaching is paralleled in The Gospel of Luke’s version called the Sermon on the Plain – if you read the two sermons side by side you’ll note some significant differences which we unfortunately don’t really have time to delve into today, but it is worth the effort if you have some time this week. Matthew’s compilation is called the Sermon on the Mount because our text today tells us that Jesus went up on the Mountain to teach. It is unclear if Jesus did this to get away from the crowds in order to better teach the disciples one on one, or if he went up on the mountain so that the crowd could better see him and hear what he had to say. Either way, the more significant image that Matthew wants us to take away from Jesus’ position is that Jesus continues to be like a new Moses. Just a Moses went up on the mountain to receive the 10 commandments from God, so Jesus’ go up on the mountain to bring a new word from God for Matthew’s audience.

So, clearly what Jesus is doing and how he’s doing it in Matthew’s version of the Sermon of the Mount is of utmost importance – but what Jesus’ says in these first twelve verses is where I invite our attention to linger.

Beatitude is a word derived from Latin that literally means blessed. At one point it may have even been acceptable to translate these verses as “Happy are they…who are poor in sprit,” or “How happy are those who mourn.” But as you and I are well aware, happiness has been devalued in our modern age. Journalist Nancy Gibbs who wrote an article for Time Magazine entitled Happiness Paradox: Why are Americans So Cheery notes that, “Happiness is a sappy word and a flimsy concept – more fleeting than contentment, several octaves lower than joy.”

The happiness offered by Jesus in the Beatitudes does not describe a state of inner feelings like those measured by the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index which measures America’s happiness like a Dow Jones average of attitude as discussed in Gibbs article. Rather this idea of blessing, of happiness, relates to a sense being completely satisfied. It’s an eschatological blessing – in other words it is a state of permanent contentment, a fullness that endures for all time. Happiness, as we often understand it, is something that we spend our lives grasping for – usually grasping and missing – while this sense of blessedness is a state of self-contentment that only comes from God.

The trick, if you will, to Jesus’ teaching - not just here in the Sermon on the Mount, but in the wholeness of his message scattered across all the Gospels – is what leads to this sense of sacred contentment. Some scholars describe it this way, “Jesus had watched and searched the type of righteousness called [blessed] in his day, and now [took] issue with it. The Beatitudes cut across the ethic of that time (and our time); they cut across the sacred law of Moses. They are not “principles”, but jets of light and love kindled against the darkness of the age.” Not the first, but rather the last, those are the folks towards whom God’s blessings are extended.
Hear again our passage from Micah, where God cries out to God’s own people – pleading with them, with us, to understand what God desires – I do not ask for burnt offerings, nor for all your money and resources, I don’t ask for you to sacrifice your children – it isn’t the number of things you do, but the kind of things you are “about” that matter – don’t you get it? Justice, and loving kindness, and humility…And the nature of these Beatitudes are just that way – they aren’t a “to do” list, they are a “how to be” list.

We recently started using a behavior chart in our home to help Anderson make good choices throughout the day. This chart has rows listing the behaviors that we expect: cooperates in the mornings, cleans up toys when asked, etc. and it has columns where Anderson can get stickers for his behavior each day. At the beginning of the week Anderson picks the reward he wants to work toward – ice cream at his favorite place, perhaps – and then at the end of the week if he has not missed more than 7 stickers he earns his reward.

What’s tempting for us, as believers, is to try to fit these beatitudes into some sort of Spiritual Rewards Chart. If we get all our stickers for being poor in spirit, or meek, or merciful…then we’ll receive our cosmic blessing. How far we miss the mark if that is our understanding of these precious words! Fred Craddock, perhaps one of the best preachers of our era – maybe of all time, explains that the language of the Beatitudes is not hortatory. Jesus does not say, “We ought to be poor in spirit” or “Let us be meek…” “Such exhortations reflect frustration before the grace of God. It is more difficult to hear and receive a blessing freely given than to attempt to achieve one.”

We’re Americans, by default we are, if nothing else, achievers. In fact didn’t our president challenge us this past week to “Win the Future.” So where, then, does that leave us with these verses?
________________________

The first several beatitudes, those blessings offered for the poor in spirit, or for those who mourn, describe physical, emotional or spiritual states in which people might find themselves. These are the exact folks who, if we read through Micah’s lens, deserve to be showered with loving kindness. It may be difficult for us to see ourselves in the first beatitudes. Our culture does not lend itself to poverty – spiritual or otherwise, or meekness for that matter. We flee from grief. We rebel against pain, evading it, attempting to forget it in work or pleasure. Our corporations give bereavement leave, making space for our mourning, in single day increments…if we’re lucky. And righteousness, righteousness that is simultaneously personal righteousness and justice in the broadest sense of the word; well…we’re too focused on racing our way to the top to embody any kind righteousness.

And yet here are these verses – verses that would have certainly burned the ears of the spiritually elite among Jesus’ listeners just as they burn mine, perhaps burn yours. Who does this man think he is bestowing blessings on the poor ?

Those who know their need for God and turn toward God; the disenfranchised ones who are all too aware of their helplessness without God – these are the ones who inherit the kingdom of God. One commentary put it this way, “The kingdom of heaven is not given on the basis of race, earned merits, military zeal or wealth – it is given to the poor – those so poor they know they can offer nothing and do not try… And another notes, “the people who benefit when God rules, Jesus declares, are those who otherwise have no reason for hope or cause for joy, who have been denied their share of God's blessings in this world and deprived of justice -- in short, people for whom things have not been the way they ought to be. For such people, the coming of God's kingdom is a blessing, because when God rules, all this will change and things will be set right.”
________________________

In these first few beatitudes we see those in desperate need of loving kindness, in the next several verses we hear of God’s blessings reserved for those who humbly do justice. Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy. Mercy is a word that we use flippantly, perhaps without recognizing the significant implications of what it means to be merciful. Mercy is more than pity or sympathy – mercy is the tangible act of compassion. Mercy is stepping into another’s shoes – often literally – and treating that “other” as you would want to be treated. Mercy vehemently rejects cruelty, even in cases where punishment might be deserved. Mercy seeks out the world’s injustices – unethical trade and corrupt governments, human rights injustices, discrimination of every kind, the savagery of war - and resolves to erase them. Mercy embodies sacrificial love. As Christ followers we are required to do mercy, and if we cannot do mercy we must speak mercy, and if we cannot speak mercy then we must shed the tears of mercy. And mercy, by necessity, leads to peace-making.

It is important to note that it is not the peaceful person, not the peace hoper or peace eulogizer that is called a child of God. Instead the one who actively makes peace between God and humanity, the one who strives for peace one person at a time – that is the true Child of God. Peacemaking is a preventative act which strives to cure the diseases that lead to war and brokenness not just treat the symptoms. Peacemakers move with gentleness; peacemakers plead for peace in love; peacemakers actively practice the presence of God.
As I read and re-read this verse about peace-making my mind returned to a story from just a few short weeks ago where Muslims in Egypt became human shields for Coptic Christians as they worshiped on Christmas Eve, maybe you heard that story too:

On New Year’s Day, a devastating terrorist bombing at a Coptic church in Egypt killed 21 people and injured 79 others. Although the identity of the culprits was not known, it was assumed that they were Muslim extremists, intent on targeting those they saw as heretics. Religious tensions immediately rose in the country, and angry Copts stormed streets, battled with police, and even vandalized a nearby mosque. The riots and heightened tensions between the Muslim and Coptic communities was likely what the terrorists wanted — to divide the Egyptian community and create sectarian strife between different religious groups.

Yet by Coptic Christmas Eve, which took place on a Thursday night in Egypt, things had changed completely. As Egyptian Copts attended mass at churches across the country, “thousands” of Muslims joined them, acting as “human shields” to protect from terrorist attacks by extremists. The Muslims organized under the slogan “We either live together, or we die together.”

I remember thinking as I heard this story…this…this… is the first step towards peace on Earth. This is what it looks like to be peacemakers. As violence grows and flames throughout Egypt even as we speak, it is my sincere prayer that this same template of non-violent peacemaking, this sense of solidarity, this profound understanding that I am you and you are me and God desires that we live in peace with one another, will prevail. To be children of God we must be about the loving business of making peace.

Jesus concludes his discourse on the beatitudes by making it clear that being a Child of God, inevitably results on persecution. Either we are persecuted because we are poor, meek, and mourning, or because we seek to embody God’s peace, mercy and pureness in the world. Receiving opposition is a normal part of being Jesus’ disciple and this suffering is neither new, nor accidental, nor absurd. But what if we aren’t persecuted. What if no one even notices our attempts to love kindness, and do justice and to walk humbly with God? What then? One scholar proposes this jarring thought, “[Perhaps] our alleged Christianity is condemned when it is so tepid that the wicked do not persecute it but simply ignore it…” I am afraid I am guilty, far too often, of a Christianity worth ignoring.

In sum, the Beatitudes make clear that God’s desire is to set things right – to provide blessings to those for whom no earthly happiness exists, and to use the ones who “get it” - those who love kindness, seek to do justice - to bring about these blessings in a tangible way. One commentator reflected, “Whether the coming of God's kingdom is perceived as bringing reversal or reward depends only on the position that one occupies prior to its advent. God's rule sets things right. Those for whom things have not been right are blessed by the changes it brings and those who have been seeking to set things right are blessed by the accomplishment of what they have sought.”

In Diana Butler Bass’ A Christianity for the Rest of Us, she devotes an entire chapter to the concept of justice identifying it as a key attribute of growing, progressive churches. She shares the story of Kurt a member of Church of the Redeemer, a United Church of Christ congregation in Connecticut. Kurt grew up in a conservative and confessional church, but what drew him to Redeemer was the link between the social vision and the theological vision. Kurt notes that in his childhood church he was taught, “Life on earth doesn’t really matter so you don’t have to worry about the earth, you don’t have to worry about people living in the slums, you don’t have to worry about anything as long as you support missionaries. As long as you’ve sent some people out to preach the world you’ll be ok.”

But Kurt goes on to note that that “Church of the Redeemer has opened me up to seeing the world and the role of faith very differently…” Another member at Redeemer describes it this way, “It is compassion enacted. It is love. And that is radical…Church isn’t comfortable anymore. We have to reach out.” Bass reflects, “Jesus’ ability to see with compassion led to healings, forgiveness, acceptance and the forming of a new community. Mercy is the beginning of justice, the first footsteps toward God’s kingdom…justice is more than a noun, a place we go or a reward we get…justice is also a verb, something we do to get to the promised land. Justice is not a program, a political platform, or a denominational position on social issues. No, justice is the pilgrimage of the beloved community, the journey toward the establishment of the kingdom of God.”

It is my prayer that our reflection on the beatitudes today will challenge us to love kindness and seek justice in new and life-altering ways.

May our pure-hearted commitment to mercy and peacemaking set us apart as a congregation dedicated to making the Kingdom of God real in our community, O Lord. May we embody Christ’s boundless love for the world in a way that cannot be ignored. May we open ourselves to receive the blessed contentment that only you provide. Amen.

Resources:

http://www.progressivetheology.org/SNT/SNT-2005.01.30.html

http://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/progressive_involvement/2011/01/lectionary-blogging-matthew-5-1-12.html

http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt5x1.htm

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3160

http://onefamilyoutreach.com/bible/Matthew/mt_05_01-12.html

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=707

http://www.textweek.com/mtlk/matt5a.htm

http://www.isna.net/articles/News/Muslims-Make-Human-Shield-to-Protect-Christian-Worshippers-in-Egypt.aspx

The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Frank E. Gaebelein Gen Ed; Matthew, Mark, Luke

The Intepreter's Bible; George Arthur Buttrick, et al; New Testament Artilces, Matthew, Mark

Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary, Ben Witherington III, Matthew

A Christianity for the Rest of Us, Diana Butler Bass

Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 22:31:00 +0000

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

14But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

1In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: 2proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. 3For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, 4and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. 5As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.

As most of you know I work full time as a chaplain with Hospice of the Bluegrass. During this past year I completed a few additional units of Clinical Pastoral Education as I work toward becoming a board certified chaplain. Part of that education included sitting before a consultation committee of other professional chaplains who reviewed my clinical work and evaluated my ability to integrate my familial and religious heritage into my clinical practice.

It was as daunting as it sounds.

Prior to meeting with my committee I completed a series of papers including an autobiography and a theological reflection paper. In my theological reflection paper I described the evolution of my relationship to Christian Scripture, which for me had become nothing less than a crisis of faith. I noted:

There was a time in my life that my Bible was a constant companion…its margins scrawled with theological reflections – notes from sermons, lectures, Bible studies, Baptist Student Union meetings. I wrestled with the Scriptures – chewing, mulling, stewing – over what these words literally meant – for me, for God, for the world. I am amazed at the sincerity of my devotion to the scriptures and I am also humbled at how closed and oppressive some of my own theological conclusions were. As I became a religion major, I began to study Biblical Greek and Hebrew and I realized the Scriptures were not as literal and straightforward as I had once believed. As my theology began to change, one of the first things that I eschewed was the literalness – perhaps even the validity - of the Bible. My relationship with the Bible became academic at best.

Rev. Elaine Greer, Director of Pastoral Care at Central Baptist Hospital, was the head of my consultation committee and she reflected on my writings noting, “I felt sadness in Jessica’s dismissal of Christian Scriptures as a resource both to her personally and with her patients. The old saying, “throwing the baby out with the bath water” comes to mind.”

Rev. Greer was right, I had quite certainly thrown the baby out with the bathwater. The Bible that had once been my constant companion, the book that used to have all the answers to every question suddenly seemed foreign and useless. If I could not longer believe every word of the Bible was literal fact, how could I believe that any of it was inspired truth, useful for teaching, reproof, correction, or training in righteousness?

“Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” is a saying that’s familiar to us all I am sure, but just for the fun of it, I looked up the history of the saying on wisegeek.com.

First recorded in 1512 by writer Thomas Murner, throwing the baby out with the bath water is an expression that suggests one doesn’t need to reject an entire idea, concept or practice if only part of it is good. The idea of throwing the baby out with the bath water may be inspired by the relatively few baths taken by people in Europe before the 16th century. Baths were thought to be unhealthy, and they were difficult to prepare, since you had to draw and heat water for everyone to bathe in. This often meant that the same water might be used for a whole family’s bath, and the baby was frequently bathed last. At this point, the bath water might be quite dirty, and might obscure view of the baby. A mother wouldn’t want to mistakenly discard the baby with the dirty, murky water.

It sounds silly, right, that a mother might accidently toss her beloved child out the window because the nasty, dirty bathwater obscured her view. But the truth is, this is exactly what I had done with our Christian Scriptures. I could no longer see the preciousness of God’s inspiration because I was blinded by the texts that spoke of violence and war, rape and murder authorized on God’s watch, oppression, injustice, inequity, sexism, patriarchy, heterosexism, slavery, and all sorts of miracles and mysticism that I was no longer convinced could possibly be true.

So what, then, do we do when the Bible feels much more like dirty, nasty bathwater than a snuggly, squeaky clean baby? A few questions come to mind. What is Scripture anyway? What did Scripture mean for the writer of 2 Timothy? What does Scripture mean for us now? What do we do with the baby – in other words, how do we as progressive Christian believers relate to Scripture? And what, then, are we to do with the bathwater?

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

The context for our 2 Timothy passage has been hotly debated throughout Christian history. There are some scholars that doubt that Paul was the author of 2 Timothy noting drastic differences in the writing styles and theological themes in this book when compared with other Pauline letters such as Romans or Philippians. If these scholars are correct we can assume that 2 Timothy was written as late as the 2^nd Century. That being said, there are also many contemporary scholars who function under the assumption that these letters written by Paul, near the end of his life around the mid-60s in the first century.

Although this may not seem like a significant point, what this date does is it helps us better understand what the author of 2 Timothy was referring to regarding “sacred writings and Scripture.” If we work under the assumption that Paul wrote this letter then it only makes sense that the “sacred writings” he is referring to are the Hebrew Scriptures. Our sacred Christian texts were only just themselves being written and would have been virtually unknown to Paul and most other first century Christians.

Obviously, as twenty-first century Christians our understanding of “Scripture” includes all the books of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and for some Christians the Apocryphya. We’ve taken this broad view of Scripture and interpreted 2 Timothy through that lens…as if the writer of this epistle knew that someday these very words would be considered sacred. But how wide does our lens really need to go? What else is truly a “sacred” text? The Apostles Creed? The declaration of independence? The current version of the Baptist Faith and Message? The Left Behind Series? I am sure that most all of us would agree that those things take it way too far, but it is a helpful reminder that our understanding of “Scripture” is already much more broad than what the writer of 2 Timothy likely had in mind.

We could easily get bogged down in the details of what is or isn’t “sacred writing” and spend the rest of our time there, but what is more troubling for me is 2 Timothy’s assertion that “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…”

All scripture is inspired by God…who knew that such a benign little phrase could create such a crisis of faith…

Marcus Borg, in his book entitled Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but not Literally notes: Conflict about the Bible is the single most divisive issue among Christians in North America today. And because of the importance of Christianity in the culture of the Untied States, conflict about the Bible is also central to what have been called “the culture wars”. The conflict is between two very different ways of reading the Bible: a literal-factual reading of the texts or a historical-metaphorical approach.

Our understanding of how the Bible is “inspired” is the crux of this issue.

Although the NRSV translates 2 Timothy 3:14 as All Scripture is inspired by God…there are a few other acceptable ways to word this verse for instance:

All God-inspired scripture is useful…

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful…

Every scripture inspired by God is useful…

Each and every part of scripture is inspired and is useful…

Perhaps we are simply playing a semantic game, but I think it is meaningful to ask ourselves - Is every word, syllable, and article of the scripture inspired? Then what in the world do with do with those Scriptures that advocate homicide, genocide, slavery, oppression – those texts that fundamentally disagree with our understanding that God is Love, those passages that deny the God that Jesus exemplified?

Are only some parts of Scripture inspired? And if so, then how do we know which ones are and which ones aren’t? Although I’m convinced that all Christians, even biblical literalists, pick and choose the Scriptures that we believe to be most inspired, perhaps there’s a better way for us to engage the scriptures – a way that affirms both the inspiration of the collective whole, while also acknowledging that there are some parts of the text that remain incompatible with an understanding of the God that Jesus exemplified.

Frederick Buechner, in his wonderful little book, Wishful Thinking – A Seeker’s ABC, has this to say:

One way to describe the Bible, written by many different people over a period of three thousand years and more, would be to say that it is a disorderly collection of sixty-odd books which are often tedious, barbaric, obscure, and teem with contradictions and inconsistencies. It is a swarming compost of a book, and Irish stew of poetry and propaganda, law and legalism, myth and murk, history and hysteria. Over the centuries it has become hopelessly associated with tub-thumping evangelism and dreary piety, with superannuated superstition and crippling literalism.

And yet –

And yet just because it is a book about both the sublime and unspeakable, it is also a book about life the way it really is. It is a book about people who at one and the same time can be both believing and unbelieving, innocent and guilty, crusaders and crooks, full of hope and full of despair. In other words, it is a book about us.

And it is also a book about God. If it is not about the God we believe in, then it is about the God we do not believe in. One way or another, the story we find in the Bible is our own story.

So how do we, as progressive Christian believers, relate to Scripture? How do we re-discover our own story, the one that we have known since childhood? What do we do with the baby? And what do we do with the bathwater?

My conviction is that we need to once again struggle with these sacred texts. Just as I, in my early Christian naïveté, wrestled with the scriptures to discern their literal truth – so now it is even more urgent to engage them just as passionately – to chew over them, mull over them, stew over them – to find out what they might mean allegorically, figuratively, contextually – for us, for God and for the world.

In the Jewish tradition Midrash is the act of investigating sacred texts to discover their meaning and to make connections between the realities of everyday life and the unchanging biblical text. This concept of Midrash is what Jesus does as he wrestles with the scriptures in the sermon on the mount, teasing out not just their literal meanings, but expounding upon what the Scriptures meant for his followers individually and collectively, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whosoever murders shall be liable to judgment.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment…”

The idea of “investigating” scripture suggests that we are to examine it, to study it, to pick it apart, to question it, to look at it from every angle. To think deeply about what the scripture means – not just literally but metaphorically, ethically, situationally. The author of 2 Timothy challenges the reader to stay connected to the scripture and to be patient and persistent.

Our Gospel lesson for today describes a widow that patiently and persistently made her case before a judge who neither feared God nor respected people. What I love about this text is that in the original Greek the judge decides to honor the woman’s plea for justice “so that she may not finally come and slap me in the face.” The irony that a politically powerful judge would make a decision for fear that a powerless, defenseless woman would come and rough him up is comical to say the least. But the idea that her persistence, her fearlessness, paid off gives me hope that our willingness to stay engaged with these sacred texts will eventually pay off as well – even if we get a few bumps and bruises in the process.

Allow me to close with a story from Kathleen Norris’s book, Amazing Grace – A Vocabulary of Faith.

Kathleen describes a Saturday night in her small South Dakota town where she and her husband bumped into a local rancher named Arlo at a steakhouse. Arlo was a successful rancher by most standards having spent his life focused on making as much money as possible and spending as little as possible. Usually Arlo was a taciturn man, but on that particular night he was talkative and Kathleen notes that he as just be diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer, a predicament from which no amount of money can save him. Arlo shared a story about beautiful white leather family Bible that he and his wife received as a wedding gift from his wife's granddad. Arlo stated that he had admired the gift because it was quite expensive. His wife had mailed a thank you note and they had also thanked Granddad in person for the gift. But for some reason, Granddad continued to ask Arlo and his wife about the Bible every chance he got. Arlo noted that the Bible had been buried in their bedroom closet for years, but one day he finally decided to dig it out to see what granddad was so fixated upon. Upon opening the Bible Arlo discovered that a $20 bill had been placed at the beginning of Genesis and at the beginning of every other book throughout the whole Bible! Nearly $1300 in all. Arlo shook his head and wondered how much money he could have made had he opened that Bible sooner and invested that cash.

I’m certain that we all would open our Bibles more often if we thought we might discover $1300. But truth be told, we have in our possession a richness that is far beyond our imagination, a glimpse of truth that goes so much deeper than a literal interpretation of the text allows – we’ve just got to be patient enough, persistent enough and curious enough to wade through the murkiness to find it. I pray that I, that you, that we won’t “throw the baby out with the bathwater” any longer. Amen.

Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace – A Vocabulary of Faith [I read directly from the text during the actual preaching of this sermon - above is a paraphrase of the story]

And they will know we are Christians by our...HATE?

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:04:00 +0000

Recently, while watching TV with a fellow Christian, a commercial came on staring Ellen Degeneres. Our conversation went something like this:

Other Person: Ugh…Ellen…I can’t stand her, where’s my remote…[hateful homophobic words], [hateful homophobic words], [more hateful words quoting scripture and condemning Ellen to the pits of Hell]…

Me: …silence…

Other Person: [hateful homophobic words], [hateful homophobic words], [hateful words], [hateful interpretation of scripture], [hate], [hate], [hate]… what do you think?

Me: I am sure a lot of people feel that way.

Other Person: [hate], [hate], [hateful interpretation of scripture], [hateful talk about pro-choice], [hateful talk about other gay celebrities], [hate], [hate], [hate].

I endured the conversation, offering my own thoughts on the subject as calmly and as kindly as I could, realizing that, in the moment, the hate in the room fully overshadowed any and quite possibly all of the love I tried to project.

The point in sharing this story is not to incite a debate about homosexuality, or abortion, or the eternal state of anyone’s soul; or to offer my two cents about [this], or [this], or [that]. Rather it is to examine what it means when hate dominates our Christian rhetoric – both personally and globally. Somehow we’ve convinced ourselves that it is “loving” to hate “in Jesus’ name”.

God is love; God is love; God is love…

I have spent the majority of my adult life thinking about God in incredibly complicated ways…exploring theological theories and schools of religious thought. I’ve attempted to define words that are barely pronounceable (is that a word?) much less definable. I have sat in the presence of death and suffering, heartache and heartbreak, anger and fear. I have listened to others cry out to God, I have cried out to God myself wondering: how, and why, and how long and what for?

In some ways being a person of faith, being a Christian, is intensely complex.

And yet at the end of the day…it is really very simple.

Love God; Love Others; Love Ourselves

Jesus’ way is narrow, few are able to find it. But what makes Jesus’ way a narrow one is not a multitude of rules and regulations that must be followed. Indeed this legalism, this “I’m in, You’re out” mentality, is precisely what Jesus rallied against. It is not praying the right prayer, memorizing the right verses, being baptized the right way or at the right time or in the right kind of water. It is not about wine or grape juice. It is not about traditional or contemporary. It is not about Republican or Democrat. What makes Jesus’ way narrow is how unbelievably difficult it is to Love God; Love Others and Love Ourselves with our whole hearts.

The truth is…it is MUCH easier to hate.

It is easier to condemn people to the pits of hell. It is easier to wish destruction on our worst enemy. It is easier to be afraid. It is easier to incite fear. It is easier to curse, to damn, to judge. It is easier to outline what is or is not deserved. It is easier to define righteousness with “right” behaviors, “right” belief systems, “right” scriptures, “right” bed fellows. It is easier to decide who is in and who is out.

It is damn near impossible to kneel down in the dirt, to get eye to eye with “the least of these” and…love. It is damn near impossible to look into the eyes of arrogance and selfishness and…love. It is damn near impossible to share a table with “the enemy”, “the sinner”, “the unclean” and…love (see, even Jesus struggled with it).

And yet, this is what God wills for our lives. Love is the big picture, love is the little picture, love is the only picture.

So simple, yet so complicated.

[love], [love], [love]

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

Beloved

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:41:00 +0000

I do not stop and start things repeatedly. Usually I read a book, listen to an album, or watch a movie in one fell swoop…start to finish as quickly as possible.

I am not easily disturbed. In fact I often look to books, or movies or tv shows that are horrific in nature, mystical, or generally counter-cultural for entertainment.

I am rarely speechless. For most any topic I have a wealth of words waiting to bubble up to the surface and spill out – either in conversation or in writing.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved challenged all of my norms. I checked out the Audiobook version of the novel, a required text for the cultural competency module of my fourth and final unit of Clinical Pastoral Education, from the public library nearly 2 months ago. I finished it today. Listening to this story literally took all of my energy. I could only listen in small chunks. The story was so intense and complex I was unable to concentrate well enough while driving to keep up, I would have to listen and then re-listen. I took copious notes of specific lines or themes that caught my attention. I would have to listen and then re-listen to be sure I understood the context and captured the quote verbatim.

Beloved disturbed me. On multiple levels in multiple ways. The intimate and detailed exploration of the horrors of American slavery was profound, gut-wrenching, sickening, infuriating, and personally, spiritually and emotionally offensive in the worst possible, and yet most honorable way. Any account of slavery that did not produce similar reactions would be a sham.

Despite being pushed and challenged by Beloved in ways that I rarely am by fiction, I find myself virtually speechless as I attempt to engage the text in meaningful ways. I am not speechless because I am at a loss for discussable topics. Rather I am speechless because I am daunted as I consider engaging the multiple themes that captured my attention as I listened to Beloved. Here are some quotes that challenged me:

Love

Thin love isn’t love at all;

Freedom is not needing permission to love anything you choose;

Loving anything that much is dangerous, especially her children.

Mothering

Grown don’t mean a thing to a mother;

A man is a man…but a son, well, that’s something special;

When I tell you you’re mine, what I mean is I’m yours;

The best thing she was was her children.

She was my best thing…you your best thing.

Faith/Life/Grace

There is no bad luck in the world but white folks…they don’t know when to stop;

The only grace you could have is the grace you can imagine;

If you can’t see it, you can’t have it;

Sin, moving on in the house, unleashed and sassy;

To eat, walk and sleep anywhere was life as full as it got;

Human life is holy, all of it;

That woman is crazy…crazy…yeah, well…aren’t we all?

Remembering seemed unwise;

This is not a story to pass on.

I could go on for pages and pages about why each of these quotes caught my attention enough to write down, but for the sake of brevity, I wish to reflect on the single most theologically challenging concept that I have encountered in a long, long time thanks to Beloved.

As I have swiftly and painfully deconstructed and then deliberately and painstakingly reconstructed my Christian, theological worldview over the past 10 years, perhaps the single most difficult aspect for me has been making sense of Jesus’ death…and not even so much Jesus’ death, but God’s agency, God’s intention with regard to Jesus’ death.

When I stripped away all the rhetoric regarding atonement theories and ransom theories; when I let go of the idea that God could not look on my sinful human nature; when I finally accepted fully and confidently if God is anything, God is Love – I swiftly acquitted God of any agency in Jesus’ death. Did God lovingly work for good through Jesus’ death – certainly. As a result of Jesus’ death could God now identify with humanity in a previously unavailable way – absolutely. Was Jesus’ death merely the result of social/religious/political turmoil – and event that could happen to any of us – through which God remained fully present despite being unable to stop or prevent it – you’re damn right. Did God will Jesus’ death – no, No, NO!

Loving parents do not willingly murder their children. Ever. EVER.

Parents find ways to go on living their lives when, God forbid, their children are murdered at the hands of evil and malicious others…but…

Loving parents do not willingly murder their children. Ever. EVER.

But what of the flood narrative, you might ask?

Untenable I say…the God of the flood narrative is a delusional mother drowning her naughty children in a bathtub. There is no love there, there is no room for faith there, there is no shred of my God in that story.

Loving parents do not willingly murder their children. Ever. EVER.

It. Does. Not. Make. Sense.

And then I listen to Beloved. I heard Toni Morrison’s deep, timbre filled voice narrate the way in which Sethe did not think twice, perhaps did not even need to think once, about slaughtering her children and herself in an effort to “save” them from her slave master, The Schoolteacher. Although Sethe “succeeded” in killing only one of her children, she injured two others and had the intention of killing herself as well so that her children would not have to be without her in whatever kind of world followed this one.

As I listened, I understood. It made sense.

For Sethe there were things worse than death; things worse than murder.

For Sethe the most loving act was to spare her children from these worse things in any way possible.

What do I do with this?

Perhaps Sethe is crazy. Certainly the rest of the story makes a case for that possibility. But in the moment her intention was crystal clear, her motivation was love, and her act…Lord have mercy…almost seemed reasonable to me.

I’m not going to revise my theology back to the way it was before. God as an agent in Jesus’ death, or God as an agent in the flood narratives, or God as an agent in any of the other horrific tales of homicide, infanticide, and genocide in our sacred texts or in our contemporary culture remains unthinkable for me.

Sethe was supremely distressed, driven by circumstance to crazed blindness, traumatized beyond what any human was ever designed to endure. My belief is that God does not share these extenuating characteristics. But even still…

I empathized with a mother who murdered her child(ren).

Lord have mercy…

Remembering...

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Wed, 26 May 2010 03:28:00 +0000

May 26, 1994

There were only five days of school left. The air was heavy with thoughts of summer vacation, youth camp, sleeping in and the "official" transition into high school even though we'd already been in the new high school building for two years.

I was 14 years old.

A long bus ride to school, homeroom, 1^st period earth science. That Thursday began like any other Thursday. Except it wasn’t like any other Thursday, and in less than a minute my life would be changed, forever.

The PA system roared to life, “Superintendent Blavet, if you are in the building please come to the main office. Superintendent Blavet, if you are in the building please come to the main office.” Mid-lecture Ms. Baker walked to the classroom door. Turning the lock she finished her sentence and walked back to the front of the class as if her previous action had no significance. The time for class change came and went, no one stirred from their seats.

It was if we knew what we did not yet know…

The halls were hushed during the belated class change. We heard rumors,

“A freshman brought a gun to school...”

“Someone held a class hostage with a knife…”

2^nd period American History class was awkward. I remember the lights being off for the entirety of the abbreviated class period. Mr. Weibrink, a first year teacher, sat quietly at the front and showed us a movie. We asked him questions, he avoided answers. During this class the PA system called the Seniors and the Juniors and then the Sophomores and Freshmen to the auditorium.

We made our way upstairs to third period Spanish. As I walked in the door one of the sophomores looked at me and said, “Did you know the chick that was killed? She was in your class right?” “What girl I ask?” I looked anxiously at my friend Bethany for answers. The kid responded, “Christy, Kristen…last name starts with an S. Her brother shot up their whole family this morning.”

Professora Davidson was crying.

I looked at Bethany again, “Not Kristen.” I whispered. My mind reeled, trying to remember…wasn’t she in first period?

The PA system summoned the seventh and eighth grades to the auditorium.

On the way to the auditorium I think I prayed, “dear Jesus not Kristen, dear Jesus not Kristen.”

Bethany held my hand.

This part of May 26, 1994^, morphs into slow motion in my memory. I remember the vividness of the red auditorium chairs, I remember the principle standing on the floor of the auditorium, not even on the stage.

“This is a sad and tragic day for our school and particularly for our eighth grade class. This morning, at approximately 5:30 am, Clay Shrout murdered both his parents, his 14 year old sister Kristen and his 12 year old sister Lauren. Clay proceeded to kidnap his girlfriend, come to school, and then he held his first period trigonometry class at gunpoint. Assistant Principle Sorrell managed to get the hostage situation under control, and Clay is now in the custody of the Boone County Police department. Classes are cancelled for the rest of the afternoon, your families have been contacted and we have trained personnel waiting for you in the commons.”

I had known Kristen since third grade. Between gifted and talented classes, showing horses, playing in the band, and the best Halloween of my life...she was one of my very best friends.

As the rest of the kids filed out of the auditorium, I just stood there in front of my seat. In my mind I remember screaming. I’m not sure if I really did, but if the scream didn’t actually come out of my mouth, it echoed inside my mind shattering the naïve windows of my soul.

Someone call my name from the other side of the auditorium. As I turned I saw Heather, my childhood best friend, walking towards me. I hadn’t spoken to Heather in nearly two years. Middle school had taken us in very different directions. But somehow, despite the distance in our relationship, she sensed my grief, she knew of my close friendship with Kristen, and she came to find me.

Her arms encircled me and I wept against her shoulder.

We made our way to the commons where the counselors waited. High school guidance counselors, local psychologists and various clergy were instantly transformed into grief counselors. Heather and I took a seat at one of the tables where a woman attempted to direct the conversation in a meaningful way. She asked if we had any questions and one girl spoke up, “I wonder if Kristen was saved. I never took to time to find out if she was going to Heaven.” The counselor immediately responded, “Now, now, those are not the kinds of questions we need to be thinking about today. Let’s all think of the good things we remember about Kristen.”

Remember…

Remember?

The news of Kristen’s death was only minutes old. Last week she invited me to her birthday party. Yesterday I borrowed her pencil. I had books of hers on my bookshelf at home. I hadn’t even said the words, “Kristen is dead” and you want me to start remembering?

Thursday afternoon was a blur of being whisked home to my mother’s waiting arms and watching the evening news as body bags were carried out of my friend’s house.

Body bags.

My 14 year old mind could not process the image.

Bullet holes in windows…and body bags?

Childhood was over.

____________________________________________________

I tell this story, one of the very worst days of my life, for several reasons. The first is to share with you a part of who I am. To invite you into a sliver of my world, a dark and dreary place about which few people know. May 26, 1994, whether consciously or subconsciously, defines who I am and affects the way that I read every book, write every sermon, hear every song and approach every relationship.

Second, I tell you this story in an effort to articulate one of the most formative experiences in my vocational journey. As I continue in this work of pastoral care, I am certain that I will some day be called to sit at a table with grieving fourteen year olds coming to terms with their own mortality for the very first time. I am determined to welcome their questions. Unlike the counselor who dismissed the theological discussion on the day Kristen died, I recognize its value. I am painfully aware of the urgent need to voice such questions and to have them heard and honored even if there are no answers.

And finally I tell you this story because it redefined the role of minister for me. In light of the guidance counselors and pastors who, despite their best effort, proved themselves utterly useless in the face of my grief, it was another little girl…Heather…that sought after me. She stood with me in the midst of my grief. She barely knew Kristen. She didn’t try to answer my questions. She sat on my bed and winced with me as we watched the body bags being removed from Kristen’s house. She held my hand as we stood in the church during the funeral. She cried very real tears for my loss and showed me the very real ministry of presence. She preached no sermons, she read no scripture, she answered no questions. She was simply there. And I am eternally grateful.

Barenaked in Louisville

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Tue, 18 May 2010 02:50:00 +0000

This was it…

The weekend that I had been anticipating since February was finally here. At the time that I bought the tickets, I followed a tiny group of Twitter folks who shared my new-found obsession for the Barenaked Ladies. By the time May rolled around I was following over 30 BnL fans on Twitter, most even more crazy for the band than me. The beauty of instant social networking is that we could easily figure out who was making the trek to Louisville for the show and excitedly made plans to meet up at the Seelbach hotel beforehand.

As Matt and I drove to Louisville I was anxious to see the show, but actually I think I was MORE excited to meet my Twitter friends “for reals”. I couldn’t afford a VIP meet and greet ticket package, and other than tentative plans to wait for the band by the buses after the show, this meet up with my Twitter friends was as close to the BnL celebrity as I hoped to get. Matt was a trooper, listening to BnL all the way there and he was so patient as I acted like a little kid on Christmas morning meeting all my new friends.

As expected my Twitter friends are even lovelier in person than they are in 140 characters or less. I had a great time putting faces with avatars and real names with Twitter monikers. It was instant friendship – forged by our mutual adoration of an amazing band with a life-changing catalogue of music.

The highlight of our pre-show meet up was seeing Tyler Stewart (BnL’s drummer) walk by the window of the hotel bar with Starbucks in hand. Clearly we giggled like school children and collectively hoped for a chance to say hi in person after the show. Towards the end of dinner those of us with Twitter access on our phones got a tweet from @barenakedladies linking to a photo of one of our other Twitter friends. Turns out Tyler, who posted the photo, had eaten dinner with our friend at another restaurant across town. We all kicked ourselves for not taking up her invitation to have dinner with them before the show!

About 45 minutes before the show we walked to the venue to find our seats, check out the merchandise and see who else we might bump into. Our seats weren’t as good as I would have liked – despite fan club pre-sale, we only got row P – but once Ingrid Michaelson took the stage I knew we’d have an awesome time regardless. Ingrid was fantastic – she was also one of the openers for the only other BnL show I’ve seen (Cincinnati 2009) – and both Matt and I adore her.

Between Ingrid's set and the main event I found my Twitter friend who had dinner with Tyler! Her seats were a few rows behind ours and she invited us to come out to a bar with her group after the show. Of course we gladly accepted her invitation. I introduced her to many of the other Twitter friends I had met before the show and it was like a big happy BnL family reunion in the aisles of the Louisville Palace Theatre!

The concert itself was fabulously, amazingly, breathtakingly, flawlessly wonderful...

(as I knew it would be)

Ed (guitar/most lead vocals), Tyler (percussion), Kevin (keys/guitar) and Jim (bass/occasional keys) were hilarious and engaging, serious and intense, joyful and thoughtful. One of my Twitter friends and I “live-tweeted” the show giving playlist updates, narrating for all our friends who couldn’t make the trip what was happening and when. I literally didn’t stop dancing, singing or tweeting the entire time!

How’s that for multi-tasking?

There were a few really special highlights from the show – the most meaningful being an intimate rendition of When I Fall going out by special request to my other live-tweeting friend. She has the melody of When I Fall tattooed on her back and had asked Ed after a show in Nashville to play it for her in Louisville. Which he did! She tells the story more eloquently than I can, but I was thrilled for her to have this sacred moment with her favorite band. When I Fall is one of my most beloved songs as well – so I think I speak for everyone when I say that we all were blissed out for her.

Another highlight for me was realizing that the band played all four songs that I had requested via Twitter earlier in the day. I knew they would play Ordinary and The History of Everything (Big Bang Theory theme song) as they have been playing these every set, but I also asked for Let There be Light (as had many others) and On the Lookout – two songs from the new album that they hadn’t played yet (or much) as far as I knew.

As sad as I was for the show to wrap up – the encore set proved to be another unforgettable element of the show. Not only did they sing Let There Be Light, but Tyler kicked ass singing Alcohol (a song formerly sung by Steve) and Ed offered a flawlessly brilliant version of What a Good Boy.

I believe my live tweets of those songs were:

@baldy67 ALCOHOL ... F__KING SEXY AWESOME!!

@barenakedladies HOLY GOD Ed killed that.

So, after the show we reconvened as a Twitter group – gushing over the When I Fall amazingness – and made our way around back to wait for the band by the busses…

Hang with me…this is where it gets good…

So we waited…and waited… and security was rude…and we waited…and then realized we were in the wrong place…and so we rushed back around the building to another place…and waited… and security was rude some more…and then Kevin came out and ignored us…and we waited some more…and then Ed came out, put his stuff on the bus…and then walked over to the group (which was much bigger than just our Twitter group). I got the distinct impression that Ed was unbelievably exhausted.

Cue the nerves...

I let everyone else crowd around Ed while I gathered my thoughts, made sure that Matt knew how to work the camera, and reapplied my lip gloss. I was internally stressing about what to say and when it was finally my turn to approach him he was surrounded by security like a quarterback in the pocket.

I said: Hey Ed, wanna get our picture taken with security?

(gee…real smooth first thing to say to your favorite lead singer in the universe…ugh)

To which he just laughed and smiled and put his arm around my shoulder to pose for the picture.

As he was doing this I said: This is my first time meeting you…

(again, brilliant, huh?)

After Matt snapped the shot (which turned out GREAT!)

Ed said: So, where ya from?

To which I said: Lexington, about an hour or so east of here.

To which he said: Well, nice to meet you…

And then he was on to the next adoring fan.

Needless to say it wasn’t a life-changing conversation, but still one that I’ll never forget. I am quite certain he won’t remember my face or my name if there ever is a next time…

So, we hung around a little more and gushed over all the other wonderful things he did, or said, or signed as everyone had their moment in time with him…

Once that was over, Matt and I and several other Twitter pals made our way to the bar that had been recommended to us.

Keep hanging with me…this is where it gets REALLY good…

As we walk up to the bar my friend says, “Well, I see where Jim is…”

Lo and behold he is sitting at a table on the bar’s patio having a drink with some folks we don’t know…we make our way past his table (externally cool, calm and collected…inside FREAKING OUT) only to find that Tyler is sitting with our friends who invited us to the bar and Kevin is just a table away with some other folks.

I am in shock…

AACK

…here I am literally feet away from the rest of the members of my favorite band of all time

(Beatles are a close second of course, my daddy raised me right)

...trying not to let my internal freak out make its way to my outsides…

Matt and I make small talk with some other folks at the table – everyone is intrigued that I am a minister, and I reassure them that I am very open theologically so they don’t need to watch their language or behavior around me much to their relief.

We order drinks.

After nearly chugging my Raspberry Meade (excellent drink I might add – thanks for the recommendation super nice BBC server woman with the smokin’ hot tattoos) Matt and I decide it is about time for us to head back to Lexington, and I give myself a mental pep talk as I prepare to say a quick hello to the rest of the band and thank them for an awesome show.

(Don’t screw this up, Jess…say something articulate…intelligent…memorable…)

As Matt is paying our tab, I walk up to the table where Kevin and Tyler are now sitting together and say something like:

Hi, I am sorry to interrupt you, but is it ok if I say what a good show that was…great I mean...wonderful show.

(ugh…smoothness is not my strong point tonight)

Tyler says: Sure, thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.

I reply: Alcohol was amazing, such a surprise! I actually tweeted about it. I think my exact words were F__CKING SEXY AWESOME.

Tyler smiles and says: Actually, I saw that…so you are (kinda grasps to remember my name or my Twitter name…)

Me: Jessica, or jlmschirm on Twitter

Ty: Right, yeah, I read that…thanks

(currently my insides are going BANANAS thinking, holy shit he actually reads my tweets….have I said anything stupid???)

Me (to Kevin): And thank you for playing Let There Be Light. It is such an amazing song. Actually you played all the songs I asked for. Thank you so much.

Kevin: Oh you are welcome.

Ty: Yeah, (smiles) well, … I think you’ve been asking for Let There Be Light for a while right?

Me: I have and so have several other twitter folks. It is a really wonderful song.

(at this point I realize that we might chat for longer than I expected so I just take a risk and sit down at the table…GUTS of STEEL I tell ya!)

Kevin: So I have to ask, what do you like about Let There Be Light?

(unbelievably honored that he cares enough to ask what I think…)

Me: Well, it is such a hopeful song. There is amazing positive energy in it. It just really resonates with me. I wish it would have made the actual album…but I guess I understand why it didn’t.

Kevin: Really, why is that?

Me: Well, I guess it just has a very different tone from the rest of the album. I think it is as good or better than some of the other songs on there, but I am not sure where it would have gone, you know?

Kevin: Yeah…

Ty: But don’t you think it would have added an element to the album that is missing, some of that positive, hopeful energy perhaps?

(smiling, and sensing that there must have been tension among the band when this song didn’t make the actual album…I say…)

Me: I can tell you really advocated to have it on the album?

Ty: I think it should have been, it is a damn good song.

Kevin: Yeah, it’s a great song.

(I am impressed both with Kevin’s confidence in this song and how incredibly humble he appears simultaneously…)

Me: (to Kevin) Well, of course I have no idea what you intended when you wrote it, but it has a very sacred feel about it to me. I am a hospice chaplain, and I journey with folks through some of the darkest times of their life. It is a breath of fresh air to hear a song like that.

(this part of the conversation gets fuzzy for me because I am in shock that we are STILL talking…so I know we said all the rest of this, but I can’t remember exactly what order it happened...)

Kevin: Wow, really, that’s a really important job.

Ty: I bet that is tough.

Me: It is, but it is meaningful work, though. I love it. I am sure you understand…

Kevin: Yeah, I do. (smiles) I get to make people happy with my work. (slight pause) So what does that mean, Hospice chaplain? What do you do?

Me: Well, obviously someone with Hospice gets nursing care to meet their physical health needs, but we realize that a life threatening illness affects folks emotionally and spiritually as well – so everyone has access to a chaplain and a social worker. The hospice I work for is a non-religious organization – so I don’t represent any specific religion or faith tradition. I work with folks of all faith traditions, folks with no faith. I just try to connect with people with whatever is spiritually meaningful to them and try to help them draw strength from that as they are on their journey.

Ty: Wow, I bet that is intense.

Me: It is, you have to take good care of yourself…you really can’t carry all that for people, it would kill you. I just try to journey with them, beside them…but yeah, it is tough…

Ty: So it sounds like a big part of the job is companionship.

Me: Exactly, I can’t tell you how many houses I go into and just sit and watch Bonanza with people, or the Price is Right and sometimes we talk about meaningful things during commercials…but, your music is one of the ways I take care of myself at the end of the day as a release of all that…

(At this point I think the conversation has to be nearly over. I am so grateful for this experience…Matt has come back from paying the bill and going to the bathroom and sits down for a minute. Kev is chatting with someone else who has walked up to the table. Much to my surprise, Ty continues the conversation…)

Ty: So have you been a fan for a long time, been to a lot of shows?

Me: Actually no, this is only my second show. I am a fan because of Snacktime!

Ty: Really? So you have kids?

Matt: Yeah, we have a 3 year old.

Me: His name is Anderson. We listen to Snacktime every single day. He loves it. I have always been a superficial fan, had a few albums, knew your hits, but only became a dedicated fan after hearing Snacktime which made me want to explore the other albums deeper…

Ty (interrupting Kev’s conversation): Hey, Kevin, She says she’s a fan because of Snacktime…She has a three year old…

Kev: Really, what songs does he like?

Me: Well, right now he loves the whole Snacktime set. Snacktime, Popcorn…

Kev: Vegetable Town…

Ty: (laughing) the Tri-lo-gy…

Me: Exactly…and Pollywog of course. I was excited to hear that tonight. I thought you were going to play Allergies before you broke into Alcohol…such a tease.

Ty: We were gonna try, but it is just not tight enough yet, maybe tomorrow…It was a fun album to make, cool that our kids got to sing with us.

Matt: Really, what songs do your kids sing on?

Ty: They are all over the place (goes on to list where his kids sing)

Matt: That is really cool…

Me: I am amazed at how many songs on Snacktime make me cry…

Ty: Really, what songs?

Me: Well…Things

Ty: You know several songs make me cry too. Actually I sent Kevin a message once when Vegetable Town made me cry. I was all “…dude this song…it is just so moving…” I was serious. And he sent me a message back saying, “Hey thanks man…but you know…it is just a song about vegetables.”

Me: (laughing) Were you like, gee thanks for killing the mood man.

Ty: Nah, it was the perfect Kevin response.

Kevin: (smiling)…It is a good album.

Me: I would hope you’d think so, (smiling, playfully) you wrote 90% of it…

Kev: (smiling) yeah…

Matt: Yeah, Jess has used several of the songs from Snacktime at our church…

(I get kind of anxious at this point...nervous about coming across as too "religious-y"...an image I really don't like to project...)

Me: Yeah, my part time job is that I am the children’s coordinator at our church and I preached on Father’s Day last year using Things as my sermon hook…and what else…um, I’ve done children’s sermons using Crazy ABCs and Bad Day…obviously ours is a church with progressive enough theology that the Barenaked Ladies are welcome…

Ty: Yeah, Bad Day is a good one, classic Steve Page, but good.

Me: It is a good song, it tells kids that it is ok to have a bad day, ok to feel mad, people won’t stop loving you and it’ll be better tomorrow… you have two kids, right? Daughters?

Ty: Yeah, 9 and 11…

At this point a few more folks have walked up asking for autographs. Ty is telling someone a story about Las Vegas… It is much later than Matt and I had intended to stay, but how could I walk away from that conversation?!?! Ty asks Kevin if he is ready to go, we stand up and say thanks for the show again, nice meeting you…blah blah blah…and walk away from the table.

I am amazed at how calm and “normal” the whole conversation felt. I am both in awe and totally impressed with myself for not appearing like a total idiot…(I hope!)

Hang with me for a few more minutes…I haven’t met Jim yet…

So, Matt and I make our rounds, I say goodbye to all my Twitter friends, snap a few last minute pictures. I take a deep breath and head to Jim’s table (where he is still totally engaged with those same folks from when we first saw him) and prepare to say a quick “thanks for the show”.

Me (feeling really bad for interrupting): I am so sorry to interrupt…but I just wanted to say thank you so much for an amazing show, and for playing On the Lookout.

Jim: Oh hey, no problem, you are welcome.

Guy at Table: (pointing to the S&D4 button on my shirt) Hey, what’s on your pin?

Me: Oh, this is a button counting down until the next cruise.

Guy: (to Jim) Cruise?

Jim: (to guy) Oh yeah, we do cruises…it is like a giant floating music festival.

Me: Yeah, I haven’t been on the others, but I am hoping to go on the next one. We didn’t become fans until the Snacktime cd.

Woman at Table: Oh we love Snacktime!

Me: Yeah, us too. We have a three year old, we listen every day. (to Jim) He would have loved pollywog tonight.

Guy: Yeah, we listen to Snacktime every day too!

Me: (putting my hand on Jim’s shoulder) Well, we need to go, but thank you, again for a great show!

Jim: No problem…

Ok…you made it…deep breaths…

So Matt and I left the bar…walked back to our car and I giddily sent thank you tweets to the band, to Tyler and Kevin for graciously talking to us for so long, to my Twitter friends for sharing the night.

It still feels surreal…

I met the band…

I MET THE BARENAKED LADIES!!! …

All of them…

I talked with Kevin and Tyler for over 20 minutes…

Did this really happen…

And more importantly…will it ever happen again?

Such an amazing, unforgettable, once in a lifetime kind of night!

Obsession

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 18:48:00 +0000

Click here to check out my review (i.e. testimonial) of Barenaked Ladies new album All in Good Time for PopTheology.com.

You can also watch the official video for the first single, You Run Away, at http://www.poptheology.com/.

All in Good Time is available for purchase everywhere starting today, March 30, 2010. Get your album now!

What I do in my free time...

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 03:52:00 +0000

Follow this link to the Pop Theology website to read my recent book review of Amy Greene's, Bloodroot.

Who Needs Sleep?

noreply@blogger.com (jlmschirm) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:06:00 +0000

Baptist Seminary of Kentucky Chapel Service

February 8, 2010

Luke 9:28-36

Several weeks ago, when I was invited to preach at this service, the chapel coordinator suggested that I consider preaching from the lectionary text for this coming Sunday, as many of you have your own sermons to prepare on these same texts. “What a great idea,” I thought, until I saw that the suggested text was the Transfiguration. I won't lie, I groaned, loudly. It isn't that I'm not up for a challenge, but seriously, the Transfiguration? Could there be a more complicated text? So I did what any thoughtful homilitician would do, I posted a question on Twitter asking my fellow minister friends to tweet me back with their biggest theological take-away from Luke's account of the Transfiguration, in 140 characters or less of course. I got one reply. From my brother. I guess that it is safe to assume that everyone else is intimidated by Jesus' transfiguration too.

And really, who wouldn't be? It is a complex text on so many levels. Basically, for me, it feels out of place. Immediately preceding the transfiguration narrative we find the disciples feeding the 5000 and Jesus challenging his disciples to take up their crosses and follow him. Afterward we see Jesus healing a possessed boy and the disciples bickering over who would be the greatest. Right in the middle of Jesus' practical ministry there's this fantastic mystical experience.

Richard Vinson, in his commentary on Luke, suggests, as do several other scholars, that the Transfiguration was perhaps originally a resurrection story. For whatever reason Mark's Gospel writer somehow transposed the narrative back into Jesus' earthly ministry and Matthew and Luke followed suit. I suppose if we can get past it's awkward textural location, it doesn't seem so strange that Jesus would retreat to pray – it's good self care, after all and we'll talk more about that in a bit – and it isn't unusual for him to take only a handful of followers with him, but apparitions of two of the most significant religious leaders in Jewish history, and voices from heaven, and glowing clothes – well, it's all just a bit overwhelming and it doesn't seem to fit comfortably in the context that Luke offers us. So, I'm left wondering, what was the purpose of the transfiguration story for Luke's readers, for the disciples, and for us?

For Luke readers, the parallel between Jesus' transfiguration and Moses' reception of the 10 commandments is nearly unmistakeable. Like Moses, Jesus journeys to the mountaintop where he encounters the presence of God in a cloud and his very being is changed as a result. In addition to Moses, Elijah joins Jesus and the disciples on the mountain. Vinson notes that Elijah's appearance suggests that Jesus' transfiguration is a preview of the Last Day perhaps connecting to Jesus' statement in Luke 9:27 that some will not taste death before they see the Kingdom of God. Obviously God's voice, identifying Jesus as God's chosen connects Luke's readers to the story of Jesus' baptism and God's statement of pleasure with Jesus in that sacred moment.

William Loader, in an online commentary, suggests that for Luke's readers (and for us I would add) Jesus is to be understood as THE meeting place between heaven and earth. His birth, his baptism, his transfiguration, his crucifixion and ultimately his resurrection all demonstrate that, “what the hearts and minds of the visionaries have longed for is being realized in Jesus and will come to full completion in him.” But we could spend all day exploring various commentaries for the significance of Moses and Elijah, or searching for parallels, but I'd rather us turn our attention to the disciples and their role in the transfiguration narrative.

As I read the synoptic versions of the transfiguration, Luke's account struck a chord with me, particularly concerning the disciples' sleepiness. Luke's is the only version of the text that suggests that the disciples were sleepy, or asleep, during Jesus' transfiguration and Luke attributes their confusion and Peter's ridiculous tent building suggestion to their exhaustion. Obviously, sleepy disciples is not a new theme. As I read Luke's account my mind jumped ahead to the Garden of Gethsemene where Jesus sought isolation and prayed himself into a bloody sweat only to find his most faithful followers asleep on the job.

One commentator suggests that the disciples' sleepiness indicates their denseness about what's going on or perhaps how easy it can be to miss Jesus' glory. Throughout the Gospels the disciples are often presented as dense, obtuse, or genuinely clueless – and their sleepiness appears to be a contributing factor in their slowness to understand Jesus and his mission. But, truth be told, I think the disciples get a bad wrap. I'm exhausted simply reading through the chapters preceding Luke's transfiguration narrative. In a very short time, Jesus' followers had their lives flipped upside down and sideways. They've gone from being fishermen, tax collectors, and farmers to faith healers, preachers, and theologians. They are on guard and at Jesus' side nearly every moment of every day, and for the most part they do this faithfully and with minimal whining. I'm a wife, a mother, a chaplain, a children's minister and a student. I am exhausted nearly every day and some days I don't know if I am coming or going. There's no guarantee that if Jesus appeared to me at any given moment, even in all his glory and splendor, that I'd be alert enough to savor the experience – so I can't hold the disciples to a much higher standard.

Pam Fickenscher, a Lutheran pastor, wrote this about the disciples' inability to stay awake:

The disciples have been weighed down with the kinds of cares that keep them from seeing clearly what is right before their faces; now, though they are still sleepy, Peter, James and John are awake enough to see Jesus’ glory. Staying awake is usually an Advent theme in the church year, but it is no accident that this text appears every year as we head into Lent as well. If it took the dazzling transfiguration of Jesus before their very eyes to wake these apostles up, what will it take for us to see God’s presence in our lives? What are the signs in our world that we regularly overlook because we are simply too weighed down with other things? And why, when we are finally given the opportunity to wake up, do we so often misinterpret the meaning of these revelations?

The truth is, the disciples were carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. They were doing their darnedest to make sense of the humanity of Jesus, the divinity of Jesus, the ministry of Jesus and the impending passion of Jesus. I can't blame them for substituting naptime for prayertime. The weight of our world seems miniscule and insignificant when compared with these faithful followers who experienced Christ in the flesh and watched throngs of people mob him in an effort to gain new life.

As a hospice chaplain I journey with people into some of the most sacred moments imaginable. I sit with folks as they review their lives, as they imagine their legacy, as they prepare to die. It is both daunting and rewarding each and every day. But you want to know something horrifically sad. There are days when I am so tired that I miss it, the sacredness that is. There are days when being a pastoral presence with the dying becomes “just my job”. I am sure that learning about self-care is an integral part of your seminary experience, as it was mine, especially if you do any sort of Clinical Pastoral Education. And yet, no matter how important we know it is, taking care of ourselves often becomes just one more task destined for the bottom of the to-do list. Can you relate? I am certain that many of you, in addition to being students and professors, are parents and spouses, pastors, preachers, chaplains, missionaries and teachers. We are literally working ourselves to death in Jesus' name - dangerously close to missing the glory of God that is right in front of our faces.

The problem is that there is still so much to do. There is theology and church history and greek to learn; papers and books and sermons to write; there are interfaith dialogues to contribute to; peace and social justice to advocate for. There are orphans and widows to protect; prisoners to visit; hungry mouths to feed; thirsty souls to quench; naked bodies to clothe. Everywhere we look, the world still urgently needs the love of God, and God still calls us to share it. The task at hand is daunting. Do we even have time to rest?

The real question is, do we even have time not to rest?

Who needs sleep? We need sleep.

And prayer. And restoration.

As I mentioned earlier, it isn't surprising that Jesus' transfiguration occurred when he retreated to an isolated place to pray. Just a cursory look throughout Luke's gospel offers multiple examples of Jesus intentionally making time to rest, prepare and refocus. Before naming his twelve apostles, Jesus spent a day and a night in prayer. And remember that Jesus was sleeping, prior to being woken by his frantic disciples to calm the storm. Jesus delegated the ministerial workload to his apostles, recognizing that he didn't have to be the only one healing and preaching. Jesus challenged both his friends and his enemies to slow down, to be thoughtful and to not worry. And whenever he could, Jesus withdrew with his disciples to pray, to refocus and to find the strength for whatever came next. I know these aren't profound ideas, but, as a colleague told me as I was preparing this sermon, “sometimes we just need to be reminded of the simple truths we seem to lose sight of along the way.” I know that I need to be reminded, again and again and again because I know w hat happens when we ministers don't take time to care for ourselves.

We burn out, we freak out, we max out and we become stuck.

Remember how I said that I received one reply to my twitter request for theological takeaways from the transfiguration narrative? Well my brother, a teacher and a minister, suggested that the takeaway for him is that the transfiguration represents a” mountain top experience”. We can't stay up there forever. Eventually we have to come down and do something. And he's not the only theologian to offer this critique of the transfiguration narrative. One commentator, had this to say:

I don't know how many times I've heard testimonies that referred to a wonderful, life-changing event in the person's life -- "a mountaintop experience." I'm certain that for some of these [ministers] they continue to talk about that one event for years and years. They have frozen that event. What I think is more important are questions like: What role has Jesus played in your life last week -- or today?

Luckily for the disciples they weren't so far gone up there on that mountain that they missed it completely. They woke up enough just in time to see the tail end of Jesus' mystical transformation. But their immediate reaction was to freeze that moment in time, to pitch three tents and camp out in that state of bliss for ever. The reality is their ministry was unbalanced and their mountaintop moment of semi-perfect awareness didn't last long. The next thing you know they are unable to heal the sick and they are fighting amongst themselves over who is the greatest. Without consistent attention to the needs of our souls and our bodies our ministries suffer. We can't rely on a mountaintop moment here or there to be enough to sustain us. If we're to the point where we believe our ministries can't survive without us, well, we're already too far gone. And I am the first to accept ownership for that in my own ministry.

There's no doubt it is a daunting task. Our fervent desire to spread God's love and to share Jesus' good news is both our greatest strength and our biggest weakness. Unlike the disciples, may we care for ourselves enough to stay awake on the job and may we be mindful of Jesus' example to pray often, to rest when we can, to worry less, and to slow down and enjoy our ministries the company of others – for it is in those moments when we fill up our souls and open our eyes and ears that we can truly see and hear the very presence of God in our midst. Amen.

Sources:

Marshall, L. Howard, Commentary on Luke, New International Greek Testament Commentary, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 1978.
Vinson, Richard B., Luke, Smyth & Helwys Bible commentary, Macon, GA, 2008.
http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/LkTransfiguration.htm
http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/luke9x28.htm
http://www.holytextures.com/2010/01/luke-9-28-36-37-43-year-c-epiphany-last-transfiguration-sermon.html
http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20070212JJ.shtml
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=639