The Morning After...

It is the day after Christmas.  The day after we celebrated the birth of Jesus.  More than a week after the shooting in Newtown, Ct.  And the news has faded, falling in behind news of the Fiscal Cliff and end-of-year sales figures.  After all, that is about the economy.  Are you tired of hearing about it yet?

I struggled.  I struggled with faith questions, trying to put together an answer for myself, something that might fly with other people as we questioned what happened.  I don't have an answer, but I have come to realize again that I don't need one.  I don't expect we'll ever have an answer.  But I found out something of much deeper importance did happen, at least for me.  Are you tired of hearing about it yet?

I know this in my head, but I received a heart lesson on the faithfulness of God.  I struggled, but God was steadfast.  I questioned, but Jesus held firm.  I had doubts, but the Spirit did not vacate the soul of this doubter.  And, a week later, when the Christmas pageant was presented in worship at our church, I believed even more of the power of Christmas.

I worry.  Everyone who came in the doors of the church that morning, I scrutinized.  Are they church members?  Are they guests?  Are they armed?  That worry is still very much part of the attitude I bring into the church, but the power of the Living God is greater still.

What is different?  I am.  I am more sensitive to things, at least for now.  I am more aware of just how precious life is, of how it can't be taken for granted.  I was aware this Christmas for the first time in a long time just how incredible a thing it is that the power of the Living God was harnessed and pulled back and invested into the form of a baby.

The New Year is coming.  All the hope and wonder of the New Year depends on the promises delivered at Christmas.  May the New Year be one of great blessings to us all.

Pregnant Through Rape-What Should We Think?

I wasn't sure if I was going to "go here".  But I don't know how I can't.

“...even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something God intended to happen.”  So said Richard Mourdock in a debate for the Senate.  He lost.

"First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. Let's assume that maybe that didn't work, or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child."  So said Todd Akin to a reporter in his run for the Senate.  He lost.

I don't know how to express my anger at what they said.  I am so disgusted.  Yet at the same time, I believe these gentlemen are being honest about their feelings and their positions on the question of abortion.  I don't admire them for that.  I expect honesty from those people that would seek votes.  I know, how naive am I?  But I expect it.  And they received the results that I would expect for making comments like that, they lost.

Consider their words.  First, Mr. Mourdock: God intends for a life to begin in rape, even the "horrible situation" of rape.  So, God intends the rape, God intends the rapist, God intends the attack, God intends the life of the woman to be shredded, God intends all of that.  The abstract phrase says something like "God authors evil".  But this puts the intention of God for the most horrible crime to happen to my wife or my daughter?

I am a pastor and I tell you no God I believe in works that way.

Now, Mr Akin.  Legitimate rape?  And the female body has ways to try and shut the whole process down?  What are you talking about?  The victim committing suicide?  Or maybe a d & c?  I read that and I come away with the twisted perception that Mr. Akin is putting the responsibility for the pregnancy and the rape back on the woman.  It was somehow "legitimate", she can "fix it". 

I am a man and I tell you that "no" means "no".  The moment the man ignores that, the crime has begun-inside marriage, outside marriage, wherever.  And, insult to injury, the woman is raped and she is responsible for birth control too?  Really?  Can such ignorance really exist?

You want a better perspective?  You want a more pastoral perspective?  Andrew Solomon spoke extensively about the children born to women who have been raped in an interview with Terry Gross on NPR's program "Fresh Air" as part of a discussion of his book "Far From the Tree".  You can find the interview at http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/.  I heard the interview on Nov. 12.  

As a member of my church, I am called upon to take time for my neighbor, to pray for my neighbor, to serve my neighbor.  Andrew Solomon gives insight on what that is like far more

What Do You Remember from School?

I went to a Christian High School out on the west coast.  (Pacific Northwest, so West Coast, not 'left coast' in California).  And something happened there at recess and lunch time and between classes that would be absolutely intolerable in any high school today.  40-75% of the student body at any given point would troop out the back doors of the school into the 'smoke hole' located in the woods behind the school to light up on cigarettes.

Grades 8-12, Christian kids, from a bunch of churches around the area, smoked, maybe up to a pack a day.  And it was okay.  And teachers who smoked had duty out there in the smoke hole.  When I graduated, grade 12, there was finally a move afoot to phase out the smoking and the smoke hole, from the incoming 8th grade class and up, year by year.

I remember my senior high trip to the capital city.  Big attraction was a smoke shop.  Turkish cigarettes were the rage, if I remember correctly.

I knew people who would get me alcohol, if I asked.  I knew who was having premarital sex.

Yah, Christian High School.

But there were a few things I wouldn't be able to tell you.  I wouldn't have been able to tell you where to get drugs.  I could not have told you who in our class might be the one who would bring a gun to school to shoot someone with.  That wasn't even in our focus.  There was low-level bullying, especially if you didn't smell like cigarettes...

And the strange thing is that our church Youth Groups-Young People Societies-did a pretty good job "churching" us.  There wasn't the decimation of young people that seems to occur all too often somewhere between the latter stages of high school and college.  There was some, of course, but not so bad.

So now, here we are a generation later.  More stuff, more availability of stuff, more tempting stuff, more needs for the church to do something in the lives of young people.  1 Corinthians 13, translated just before, the choice of so many weddings, is the bible's voice to the question of Love.  It is also the Scripture for Youth Sunday next week.

How does the culture of young people today stand against those verses?  More focus on that this week.

1 Corinthians 13: A translation for my youth

If I talk using really big and complicated words, or if I am talking in some weird religious "angel-speak", but I don't have love, I'm no different than your cel phone going off in the middle of class-noisy, disruptive, and not at all helpful.

If I prophecy-that is speak God's word about now and the future; if I figured out ALL God's mysteries; if God gave me the ability to know EVERYTHING; if my faith was so strong that I could knock a mountain over with a feather, BUT I don't have love, I am nothing-zero, nada, empty, done.

If I give away everything that I have to help poor people, if I let myself get killed because of what I say I believe in, but I don't have love, I get NOTHING out of it.

To be a loving person is to do the following:
  Love is to Put up with all the crap dished out by other people.
        Love is Not only acting good toward other people, but thinking good about them too.
               Love is Not to be jealous of other people.
                      Love is Not to go "me first", ever.
               Love is Not behaving like some show off, know-it-all.
         Love is Not being full of yourself.
  Love is Not getting in someone else's face.
        Love is Not simply trying to get everything for yourself.
               Love is Not easily p****d...er...ticked off.
        Love does NOT keep score of the bad things that are done by others.

Love does NOT think it is cool when others do bad things, like dissing other people, like bullying other people, get the picture?
           Rather, Love knows that the TRUTH of the thing is cool-no matter the cost.

Love puts up with everything.
            Love believes everything.
                        Love hopes for everything.
                                      Love patiently lives through everything.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Love CAN'T fail-EVER.
     Remember the stuff about prophecies?  That is going to be eliminated.
                   Fancy words and weird religious angel-speak?  It is going to stop.
     Knowledge about everything?  It is also going to be eliminated.

Right now, we only have part of the story.  So, like, when someone prophecies and such, we only get part of the story.

But when love is made perfect, SNAP, we get the whole story, perfect and complete,
       and the part we got right now will be eliminated.

Another way to think about the love being made complete:
When I was a baby,
                 I talked baby talk-goo goo gah gah
                            I thought like a baby-in my head-goo goo gah gah
                 I figured things out like a baby.
But when I grew up, I ditched all the baby-stuff.  Does that make sense?

Let me try another one:
When the love is only in part, it is like trying to look into the bathroom mirror by the light of a small candle when the power has gone out, trying to pick out your reflection to do makeup or shave or whatever in the dim light.
BUT, when we get the lights back-when the love is complete-everything is clear.

                  It is like I said before, right now I only know a part of the story,
 but THEN I will know everything just like everything about me is going to be known.

        So right now we got three things, faith, hope, and love,
                       But LOVE is by far the greatest of the three.

What if UFO's look like airplanes?

I was walking home in the evening and I thought I was in an episode of the X-Files.  There was a light overhead, very bright, headed right toward me.  Then the light banked and the blinking lights of the wings, the full outline of the aircraft became evident, then the sound of the engines...

Okay, so it wasn't a UFO...or was it?  Here is my conspiracy.  If aliens were coming to spy on us and they could not by some cloaking technology keep us from seeing them, why not make their spaceships look like airplanes?  Makes sense, doesn't it? 

Works for the government, doesn't it?  Making the UFO's look like airplanes?

Okay Pastor...UFO's?  Do I believe in this stuff?  Well, supernatural is stock in trade for me.  Jesus, God, Holy Spirit...see where I am going?

Really?  Jesus and UFO's in the same sentence?  Well, have you read the first few chapters of Ezekiel?

So consider this:  Do you believe that angels walk among us?  The bible talks about people entertaining angels unawares.  How about something even cooler?  Angel-stuff, God-stuff walking around among us...even in us?

There is this thing we believe, that God so loved the world, that He sent His Son to dwell among us.  The promise continues, that after Jesus returned to the Heavenly Father, we were not left alone, but the Spirit of God, which came down upon Jesus at His baptism, comes down on each of us.

So next time you see an airplane...is it an airplane?  Or is there a UFO inside?  Or the next time you find yourself reaching beyond yourself to do for someone else.  Is that you?  Or is the Holy Spirit inside?

The Hurricane After the Sermon

The sermon last week was entitled "God's Presence Demands a Reponse", a fitting response to the power of prayer.  Then came Sandy.  The day after the storm, I drove into Perth Amboy to check the church.  And there, in the midst of the debris being cleaned off the streets, boats from the marina piled up onto Front St., power out in 85% of the city, 66% of the state, those words stood out from the church sign.

God's Presence Demands a Reponse.

A day without power makes one feel small, two days and it feels like something off the television.  There is a darkness without any lights out that is so different from the electric invasion of the night that we are used to.  Shades of dark blue and gray and black are the pallet, not the shadows of streetlamps giving glimpses of the day time in the pools of light they throw out.

For me, it was like God's presence moved into the technology that we so take for granted and, just for a moment or two, the tech was shoved aside for something more primal. 

We are a week from the election and, as always, it is so polarized, so ugly, so overwhelmingly negative these last few weeks...then a storm of epic proportions comes in and we, the people, left, right, donkey, elephant, we close ranks to care for one another.

For me, it was like God stepping down from on high and reminding us that elections are good, elections are necessary, elections are the foundation of the best form of government in history, but let us not forget who is really in charge, who can really pull a country together.

People died in the storm, that tragedy cannot be forgotten.  And to credit God with the storm is to set responsibility for those who died on Him as well.  But how about some perspective?  How many shootings?  How many homicides?  How many other ways that humans have to kill humans far outweigh this event? 

It is not my intention to lessen the impact of those who died in the storm, but neither is it my intention to lessen the deaths of any human beings.

All this from a sermon title.  Well, a sermon title is supposed to derive from a sermon.  A sermon is supposed to derive from the interpretation of God's Word.  This time, the Word was not spoken from the pages of Scripture but from the world created by a Word of command.

Scripture and the death of an officer in the Line of Duty

There has been a campaign going on to achieve the goal of keeping the number of officers killed in the line of duty under one hundred in a year.  We made it to October.  Arthur Lopez, a police officer on Long Island, was killed in a traffic stop on Tuesday, the 100th officer to die in the line this year according to an online law enforcement website.

**Need to correct something.  In the emotion of reading, I made a mistake.  The 100th officer to die in the line of duty occurred two days after Officer Lopez was shot.  It was an officer killed in a car crash in Prince George's County.  I apologize and can only say that I wasn't reading as clearly as I should have.**

I don't know what to say about that.  I am a chaplain for the police department of the city where my church is located.  I know that the loss of their first officer in the line of duty was part of the background that has led to this part of my ministry.  And I do not know how devastating it would be if this were one of ours.

What tends to push me to blog is when things coincide in ways that I cannot let stand still.

The death of Officer Lopez, finding out he was the one hundredth officer to fall, came right on the heels of my sermon prep for Sunday.

My text is 1 Samuel 2.  Plot synopsis: Elkanah has two wives, Penninah and Hannah.  Penninah bore him children, Hannah not.  He loved Hannah more, like she was a trophy wife.  She prayed and was given the gift of a child, called Samuel, whom she gave to the Lord.  The text for Sunday is her prayer of thanksgiving to God.  And I am sitting here trying to figure out how her prayer, so confident and so explicit of the powers of God, applies to our lives today.

Then, dodging the work and going to my emails, I came across the story on Officer Lopez.  Going back to the text, 1 Samuel 2:6, "the Lord kills and brings to life..."  Hannah prays this triumphantly to the power of God.  Now I am looking at the obit of a 29 year old cop and considering the same words and where God is in that officer's death.

Right now, it is just a raw struggle to pray about.  I will put down more when the Lord gives me something more.

Women and Men

Sometimes interesting things coincide.  I am reading "The Pastor", the memoir of Eugene Petersen.  His earliest recollection of ministry comes from his mom, who was a traveling preacher among the mining camps in the Rockies where they grew up.  She stopped when some man quoted Paul about women not teaching or having authority over men.  Oi.

Cut to Halloween 2012.  I am in a Costume Warehouse looking to complete the costuming of the family for the holiday.  Being late October in 2012, Christmas stuff is also on display (in a Costume Warehouse a week before Halloween...but that's another post).  There are the red and white furry costumes for a grand old Christmas time.

For the men, it is the classic St. Nick costume, red hat to trousers, white trim at the ankles and wrists, heck, white trim on the faces as well.  You see hands, eyes, a bit of the cheeks, rest guarenteed to be covered against the cold of the Yuletide sleighride.

And then there were the costumes for the ladies...  There is the classic image of Mrs. Claus, red plaid floor length dress, a jolly companion to Mr. Claus.  But in the Costume Warehouse, they were the Christmas bimbettes, not dressed for the cold but...what...the warm fire back home?  Same color scheme as Father Christmas, but shrunk in the dryer...then shrunk again...and maybe a third time as well.

It is a repeat of the two classic gender role heroes in the D.C. comicbook universe, Superman and Wonder Woman.  Supe had the long johns that covered neck to toes, Wonder Woman equipped with armored Victoria Secret.

As followers of Jesus, we should really have something to say about that, objectifying women, treating them as second class people though first class sex objects.  Maybe Paul's words about how in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave nor free, in other words, in Christ, there is the systematic dismantling of hierarchy based on race, gender or economy.

But way too many of us Jesus freaks like Paul's other stuff better, the sideline stuff, the specific stuff, the contextual stuff, women stay in the second class, no authority, no teaching men.  I used that argument myself.  But I was an obnoxious middle school kid in a Christian school with a pastor's wife as my homeroom teacher.

We need to speak up.  And we need to speak up strong!

The New GA

I was impressed by most of what I saw coming out of the new G.A. It was the first time since I was ordained that it did not seem like we were eating our own young.

We have not taken a stand on hypocrisy, nor greed, nor any of the other seven deadly sins. We have not taken a stand on marital infidelity or adultery or idolatry.

When I talk about taking a stand, I am talking about singling out specific sins for inclusion in the Book of Order so that everyone knows who we are excluding. We certainly condemn all the rest of it, but if we came down on marital infideliy...adultery...the way we've been coming down on homosexuality.

But like I said, I am impressed. I see forward thinking, I see peace, I see common cause, things which Presbyterians have traditionally been very, very good at. I have hope...again. I have some residual bitterness, which I am working out, as in this blog.

I am not a prophet (I hope), but I will make a prediction. Watch out world, the mainline church is coming back and the Presby's will be in the lead.

The World's Oldest Profession and Mother's Day

I don't know how many times "whore" and "whoredom" appear in the first two chapters of Hosea, or how many references to "whoring", directly or indirectly, litter the text, but that may not have been my best choice for a Mother's Day text.

Made sense last summer when I was laying out my preaching calendar, Hosea commanded by God to marry, feeling the pull to turn to the Old Testament, closing the readings in 2 Timothy with the close of the pledge campaign the week before, it made sense.

Except for the fact that I did not do the close reading of the text I did the week leading up to Mother's Day. Wow.

I didn't try to justify the language in the sermon. Part of that is due to my theological interpretation of the bible. I believe that God inspired the bible, using the skills and abilities of the individuals that he called upon to write its various books. For example, Amos seems to have been a man of the soil. Paul has been interpreted as a man who doesn't like women. Perhaps Hosea has a little too much history in the sex trade. A sermon cannot speculate on the history and talents of biblical writers.

Besides, Hosea is a prophet, which means tons of fire and brimstone, punishment on the people of Israel for screwing up yet again and turning away from God, you know, all the violence and judgment that makes the Old Testament so difficult for many Christians. I tried to keep the focus there, any my friends in the congregation can tell you how well I did or did not make that work.

You'd think that in a culture like ours so obsessed with sex that the sex metaphors would go over better. Maybe not on Mother's day.

So what is next? There are a dozen more chapters. I've returned to the discipline of book preaching. The thought of ditching it for something else has crossed my mind...a few times. But the Old Testament is the bible of Jesus. It is what he fulfilled when he made the ultimate sacrifice on the cross.

And there are other translations where the translators were not as hung up on whores, whoring, and whoredom as these guys (a fair assumption in the world of bible academia).

Ceremony

I had the privilege of attending the Memorial Service for Fallen Officers at Ocean Grove today. Four officers ended their watches in the year 2011. I was there with a number of the officers and chaplains from the Perth Amboy Police Department.

It was intense and it was moving and I still find myself unable to process through the feelings it left behind. Maybe that is why I need to blog about it.

There were police honor guards stretching around three sides of the great auditorium. There were row upon row of shaved heads from what I think was the training academy of the Department of Corrections. The Lieutenant Governor was present to give honors in memory of those fallen officers. And there were cops from across the state.

And the ceremony cut me to the quick. I've never been witness to that before, it sent a chill down my spine to be in 'the law enforcement community'. It is very much a man's world in law enforcement, and that gathering was ample proof of that.

That ceremony is how cops deal with their emotions. Gathered in that place with so many uniforms, with tight discipline and a formality that seems so alien into today's world, something very powerful happened. There wasn't crying or sharing of feelings or anything like that, there was something deeper.

Men and women who have been called to a higher purpose, who are governed by a code, by honor, by justice, in ways that most of the rest of society is not, came together and, on the one hand, collectively grieved the loss of colleagues, but, on the other, reaffirmed the life and death nature of their profession, all in one thing.

It blew me away. I felt a code at work. It is the code that defines what it means to do right and wrong. It is a code I would aspire to. It is the code I believe Jesus taught.

Cops and Preachers

Cops enforce the behaviors that preachers sermonize about. It's preaching peace versus enforcing peace. A 'good' Christian is supposed to act in a way worthy of Jesus. Imitating Jesus is usually the rule of thumb for achieving that act of worthiness.

Those values, those behaviors, of love, grace, forgiveness, and so on, those are the grounding behaviors of polite, egalitarian society as well. We are past the days in this nation where the boss says it and we do it. Rather, we have a Social Compact, Ethics of the Public Sphere, whatever you want to title it, a series of do's and don't's that are supposed to define how we treat each other.

An application of that is exercising our Constitutional rights. I can exercise them to the point where they impinge upon your Constitutional rights. There is a Judeo-Christian ethic at the base, thankfully divorced from its religious overtones so that we can have a pluralistic society and not the Inquisition. I love the irony of thanking God for secularism...

So, the difference between preachers and police is that we, the preachers, can talk the good talk, police can enforce the good talk. We have bibles, police have guns. We are called by God to share the Word of God, daring to make the ultimate sacrifice of our own lives for it, in the pattern of Jesus. Police are called by God as well, but they carry a double burden.

On the one hand, to serve and protect the public may cost them their lives also in the pattern of Jesus. On the other hand, they also carry the responsibility that their calling may require that they take the life of another. It is a paradox that we hope is never exercised in the lives of our peace officers. On the other hand, I don't know if it something that is ever really preached about either.

Preachers have it easy, we talk the talk. It is the police who have to walk the walk. And they do that in a veiled world the rest of us don't want to see so we can pretend it doesn't exist.

But that's a post for another day.

How Do We Make Sense of Death?

I "did" the funeral of a long time church member and friend yesterday. That's a deliberate shorthand. I've also said or heard said "performed", "led", "conducted", not sure if Miss Manners has a proper action term for the process of a Service of the Witness to the Resurrection. That's what a funeral service is called in my Book of Common Worship.

In a Christian funeral service, that is where the rubber meets the road. That is where the promises of the faith are depended upon. As a minister, I am standing on what might metaphorically be called a line. On one side of that is the promise of heaven and eternal life while on the other are the grieving friends and family of a good man.

But it is not a line. It's a fogbank. If the promises of Christ transcended our human natures, these services would be celebrations. Who, according to the order of things in the church, should not be absolutely delighted and praising Jesus at the time of death that their loved one has gone to the place without pain, suffering, illness, hospitals, chemotherapy, collapsed lungs, blood problems, kidney problems, cancer...and the list goes on and on?? We should be thrilled.

Being thrilled someday means very little on the day of tears and grief. The promise of eternal life being fulfilled can take the edge off, it can give hope for the future, but to dwell there in a funeral service is to discount the very grief and loss of those gathered to say good bye.

I don't live in heaven, I live on earth, and this is where I am going to be until it is my turn to die. This is where I have to come to terms with the fact that although my friend was a walking miracle for over a decade and a half, there came a time when he died.

One valuable lesson I have taken away from being a Police Chaplain is from their procedures of Death Notification. You don't say "passed away", "passed on", "with the Lord", or anything else that can give the human ear the ability to slide away from the truth. The person has died or the person has been killed. It is couched in the best way possible, with emotional support and outreach, but truth be told.

I've been told, and I've used this line, that death is neither good nor bad, it just is. No. Death is bad. It can be argued that death can end illness and suffering, so it isn't always bad. No. The illness and suffering can be worse, a higher measure of 'bad', and death can be a release, even a relief, but at best, it is a lesser 'bad'.

At this moment, we are on a continuum, where death is good relative to the pain it ends, but that doesn't mean its good.

There have been moments, among the deaths that I have had the privilege to be witness to and participate in, when I've seen nothing less than heaven leaking in. A person is at such peace, that person has somehow touched the presence of our Father in Heaven and they have the assurance that everything is going to be okay.

That doesn't mean, for me, that death is not a bad thing. What it does mean for me, as a pastor, as a believer, as one struggling to figure out how to live like Jesus wants me to live, what it means for me is that we are seeing God's power at work for a greater good to emerge from that bad time.

And it reminds me to look forward to the day when we will have the greater good without having to first experience the bad.

Prayer-It Really Must Be Complicated to Be Right...Right?

A nine year old girl took me up on the offer to close a meeting in prayer. Then she asked me what she should say. I have always preferred long, involved ritualistic phrases that circle around the point six or seven times and sound like they could be part of some kind of magical incantation.

I told her to say something like, "Lord, see us safely home. Amen."

I began our children's time in church with a deliberate, prolonged silence. I had half the congregation looking around with me when I glanced up in the air, when I looked to the doors to the right and left of the sanctuary, wondering what was going to happen. I had a couple gesture for me to get on with it. I couldn't see the kids faces because I was having too much fun watching the adults.

The punchline was about listening for Jesus when in prayer.

Tonight, we had a prayer service for Al, who died this past week. I think I mentioned him in a previous entry. Not sure what I said exactly, the Spirit was giving me utterance along that path. Had a little trouble finding the end when I go freeform like that.

I was kind of hoping for an inspired grand finale after those little vignettes but I got nothing. That kind of makes sense though. Prayer isn't something in need of a grand finale or a complex opening. Let me take the format of a good Christian Reformed Church sermon to wrap it up, three points and a question...

Point 1: K.I.S.S. or "Keep It Simple Stupid"

Point 2: K.O.L.S. or "Keep On Listening Stupid"

Point 3: Know what you need to pray, but haven't got the words? The Holy Spirit will fill in the vocabulary. The Spirit will even pray when we are too deep in our own shit to pray for ourselves.

So what's the question? Did I really need to break up this mini-sermon with a crude word like s**t? No, will you just do it? Will you just pray? It's how we talk to Jesus.

Amen.

Non-Violence

There is a group within the church hoping to declare the PCUSA "non-violent" at the next General Assembly. Being who I am, I asked something about us being able to be non-violent because we have other people to be violent for us.

I am having trouble with this concept. Ghandi was non-violent, against the violence of the British. Martin Luther King Jr. was non-violent, against the violence of the Southern White Political Establishment. Nelson Mandela was non-violent, against the violence of the white imposed racial separation of apartheid. I am not sure how we hold to non-violence when there is not a great evil-a great evil willing to use violence-to be overcome.

I noticed in the previous examples that non-violence was practiced against white people in every case. I, as a white man, find it ironic that our church, which has a majority of white faces, is seeking to coopt the very strategy that has been used against us time and time again.

OMG! I am judging whites by the color of our skin!! Doesn't feel too good, does it?

We are coming up on the first anniversary of the Navy Seals finally killing Osama Bin Laden. How much violence against our country was prevented by the use of violence against him?

One of my predecessors at the church was a practitioner of non-violence. He went from here to the South to march with MLK Jr. and the others who gave everything, even their very lives, to force change.

WWJD, What Would Jesus Do? He would get violent when the need arose, as when he drove the money changers out of the temple. And at the Sermon on the Mount, he said, "Blessed are the Peacemakers...", a blessing that, for me, belongs squarely on the shoulders of Law Enforcement Officers, Peace Officers, in this country.

I don't have answers. I am still struggling to ask the right questions. Maybe non-violence is the stance that the church ought to take. I still need to know a lot more about what that would look like and how we'd use the non-violence to change a world desperately in need of change.

Peace, how hard it is...

Wasn't Even Thinking About Death

In yesterday's post, it was a reflection about heaven. I really didn't have anyone in mind that prompted that choice of topic. But today, it seems strangely prophetic. A friend of mine and member of my church died this morning. I found it to be a shocker, because word in the church was that he had some good choices coming that were going to make things better.

But, while there is plenty I don't know, I do know that it isn't up to us.

I don't have a lot of the profound or reflective in me this evening. I miss Al. I was given the privilege of being with his family. The thing is, heaven didn't help too much...at least not yet.

I've been around a lot of pastors and fellow Christians who have their eye on the prize. Their theology, their focus, their aim is on the life after this one. But I fear that can undercut the sacred space of this life if we are too focused on what is to come.

Life is poorer here with Al's death. His family and friends are left to pick up the pieces and try to move on. And while I thank the Lord for heaven and eternal life won for us in Christ Jesus, I thank God even more for the gift of Al's presence in my life.

And I know in my heart that I didn't appreciate that gift nearly as much as I do now that it is gone. I hope and pray that heaven will be a place where I get to feel that appreciation for the people God has put in my life without first having to experience their loss.

I don't know much, except that Jesus is walking with me. I know that more profoundly now when I need Him more. I am not feeling so indestructible at the moment. I am glad God made me worthy to receive this gift of faith. Al was a living testimony to it. I hope I can continue to live in the faith in a way that would make him proud of me.

Will Heaven Be Boring?

My greatest fear about eternal life is boredom. I know, it should have something to do with whether or not claiming to be Jesus' Annoying Henchman is a way to get me sent to the eternal tanning salon, but it isn't. Because I am a Calvinist, and I'm okay...I know where I'm going on judgment day...

But my image of heaven has never been thoroughly thought through, more of an impression really, that of a eternal tranquility, a forever 70 degree day when the sun is just perfect and the humidity is low and God has forever banished the pollen to the nether reaches. Boring as watching paint dry...but hopefully in a really comfy hammock in a pristine back yard that never needs mowing.

Today, I was driving back from a conference through Eastern Pennsylvania. My radio choices were a variety of popular music stations or Christian talk. I am a denizen of the tri-state area. Christian talk isn't usually my first choice, being a pastor and all, but I got this one pastor on a station out of Lancaster who was given an interesting question.

"What is your favorite feeling?"

Doing 65 on Route 78 munching on slightly stale trail mix wasn't mine, so I kept listening for a better answer.

The radio preacher's answer was a feeling of 'accomplishment', like finishing the last thing on a 'to do' list (he confessed to a type 'a' personality), but just that sense you get when you've done something well and good.

Now for something completely different, 9/11. I was at a police chaplain's conference where, in this tenth anniversary year of 9/11/01, the presenter showed a brief remembrance of the event. It rips my guts out to this very day.

What does this have to do with heaven? It is not so much about heaven as it is about 'accomplishment'. I listened to guys who spent months at Ground Zero, at the dump site on Staten Island, with the First Responders, with the Union guys who did the recovery and repair, some of whom are feeling the health effects today. And I can only try to experience their sense of accomplishment vicariously, on the edge. I did my bit, but that pales.

The accomplishment of those guys as chaplains, those First Responders, those workers on the sites in NYC, Washington, and Pennsylvania, those leaders of our nation on every level, those people of our nation and around the world, who opened their hearts and minds and accomplished a task of love and grace and caring for God and neighbor, that's the stuff of heaven.

But the real joy of heaven is that we will feel that sense of accomplishment without having to live through the earthbound hell of what real sin can do to us.

We can do for others every day of our lives, we don't need stress and crisis to motivate us, but it gets old after awhile. That is the infection of sin in our attempts to live as Jesus would want us to. Then a real hellstorm comes and, by the grace of God, we rise to the occasion, rise HIGHER than the occasion, and we overcome.

We did it after 9/11, we did it after Hurricane Katrina, we are doing it two years after the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. But it is a window of time, between 12 and 24 months, before the wave of accomplishment begins to subside.

Now imagine a place where the wave of accomplishment never subsides and we don't need sinful events to trigger a sense of accomplishment in the kind of life we should be living every day. If you can put yourself in that place, I do believe you can taste the edge of heaven.