1/6/19 1/6/19

Choices

Diana Butler Bass tells a story of a conversation with an executive from a popular coffee chain and asking, after the various combinations, how many different choices were possible from the menu. The answer: eighty-two thousand! (You can see why the person in line in front of you may stumble a minute figuring out what they want.) She writes, “Americans , even those of modest means , exercise more choices in a single day than some of our ancestors did in a month or perhaps even a year.”Think for a moment about the wide array of choices you’ll face in the next year, from how you want your coffee to how you’ll handle obstacles and challenges. Some of those choices will be life-changing, and others may seem trivial—though it may be that the sum of a lot of seemingly trivial choices shifts our lives as well. I want to suggest two factors to consider as we dive into the next year and its staggering menu of choices.First, our skill in navigating those choices depends on our capacity for wisdom. Wisdom helps us perceive what’s at stake in our choices, helps us sort out the information we need to consider in order to make good decisions, and helps us think more broadly about the impact of our decisions. Wisdom is an important virtue, as it helps guide us so that our good intentions are converted into reality. Our desires to love our neighbors or to live truthfully are impotent without the wisdom to discern between what is or isn’t really true, or the wisdom to understand the impact our actions really will have on our neighbors. It’s one thing to have the desire to be good—but we also need to cultivate wisdom so that we may indeed enact actual goodness in the world.Second, before we dive back into the world of choices, let us remember that every other choices we make is subordinate to the first choice—our commitment to following Jesus. For those who have given our lives to the Lord, we have an orienting compass for the choices we face—we meet them with the commitment to see the Lord’s will be done. When it comes to some of those more challenging questions, that commitment may be just the key that helps us see clearly what must be done.

1/4/19 1/4/19

Defining Wisdom 2

Another way of defining wisdom is that it is the ability to sort out what is important in any given moment, and to thus perceive the truth of what living well in that moment requires.Wisdom is thus an actionable recognition of truth.What I like about that definition is that it points towards wisdom as being something that possesses, instead of a static set of informational truth, a skill of discerning.

1/3/19 1/3/19

Defining Wisdom

Wisdom is a tricky concept to define, in part because of the meaning field it shares with words like intelligence, or understanding. Teasing what distinguishes Wisdom from those words requires careful consideration.For my part, I've been thinking about Wisdom over the past few years as the quality of knowing how to live in the present because of an understanding of both the past and the future.In other words, wise people understand that their actions today shape the future...and that helps them live well. Furthermore, they often gain that understanding because they have reflected upon the past. They understand the trajectories that led yesterday to become today, and that will carry today into tomorrow and beyond.

1/3/19 1/3/19

Defining Wisdom

1/2/19 1/2/19

Three Stories

Three stories about what the church is selling.1) A story about life, death, and the afterlife that allows people to sidestep their fear of death.2) Inspiration for living a good life.Both of these stories are insufficient, and people who strongly adhere to one of the purposes can see the thinness in people who choose the other.But what does God want, or get? Admiring fans? Company? What does God actually want? Both of these stories are about what humans want and need. This is their insufficiency...their narrowness.Or, consider 3: The church provides a witness to the vocation (in the sense of calling) of humanity. In this version, God has created humans for a partnership in a broader mission. The church witnesses to this calling, and guides people towards fulfilling it.

1/1/19 1/1/19

Choices

I’ve been thinking lately about the evolving spiritual and religious landscape, and more and more come back to the presence of choice. Choice strips us of illusions that are easily carried in days where religion has the cultural power to impose the facades of faith on the crowd. Instead, in the face of genuine choice, whether or not we believe/trust in Jesus becomes something that matters as much externally as it does internally.

"Of course, some people do not like choices; it makes their head hurt. Coffee, black. They always order the same thing. But when presented with new or different choices, many people take the chance and pick—in amazingly creative and innovative ways, which usually threaten those still following the old paths. In religious circles, choice is often viewed negatively as a violation of tradition, a break with custom, rebellion against God or the church, heresy: “We’ve never done it that way before.” Critics assail religious choice as selfish, individualistic, consumerist, narcissistic, navel-gazing, disloyal, thoughtless. But, if for a moment, you strip away all the judgmental religious language, it is just choice. The economic, social, and political world in which we live has opened up the possibility for eighty-two thousand choices at the coffee shop and probably about ten times that many when it comes to worshipping God and loving your neighbor. Some will choose well, others badly. Some will choose thoughtfully, others not so much. Some choose something new, others choose what they have always known. In the end, however, everybody chooses. Contemporary spirituality is a little like that line at the coffee shop. Everybody makes a selection. Even if you only want black coffee."― from Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening by Diana Butler Bass

12/26/18 12/26/18

The Good Earth

“What they should have sent was poets, ‘cause I don't think we captured, in its entirety, the grandeur of what we had seen.”

On December 24 1968, Bill Anders, an astronaut on Apollo 8, took the iconic photograph Earthrise, showing the blue Earth rising over the gray landscape of the moon.

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the image and the mission, a short film has been released, and its worth every piece of perspective it offers.

https://youtu.be/BsShNeDvccc

Lord, thank you for this good earth. May we who ride upon it through the cosmos find harmony and peace with each other, and understand our place within the vastness of space, and before you as well.

11/1/18 11/1/18

Making a Name

The book(s) of Samuel hold layers on layers of literary brilliance. Threads in the narrative tapestry that seem to be of little value—nearly throw away lines—come back around later, woven back in to take center stage in the story, or sometimes to underline a message with subtlety. It really is a master work.

One such subtle stroke gave itself to me as I was reading this week, a piece of the interplay between 2 Samuel 7 and 2 Samuel 8. Let me share a couple of sections of these two texts.

Then King David went in and sat before the LORD, and said, “Who am I, O Lord GOD, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far? And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord GOD; you have spoken also of your servant’s house for a great while to come. May this be instruction for the people, O Lord GOD! And what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord GOD! Because of your promise, and according to your own heart, you have wrought all this greatness, so that your servant may know it. Therefore you are great, O LORD God; for there is no one like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears. Who is like your people, like Israel? Is there another nation on earth whose God went to redeem it as a people, and to make a name for himself, doing great and awesome things for them, by driving out before his people nations and their gods? And you established your people Israel for yourself to be your people forever; and you, O LORD, became their God. And now, O LORD God, as for the word that you have spoken concerning your servant and concerning his house, confirm it forever; do as you have promised. Thus your name will be magnified forever in the saying, ‘The LORD of hosts is God over Israel’; and the house of your servant David will be established before you. For you, O LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, have made this revelation to your servant, saying, ‘I will build you a house’; therefore your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to you. And now, O Lord GOD, you are God, and your words are true, and you have promised this good thing to your servant; now therefore may it please you to bless the house of your servant, so that it may continue forever before you; for you, O Lord GOD, have spoken, and with your blessing shall the house of your servant be blessed forever.”

(2 Samuel 7:18–29 NRSV)

Here David recognizes the Lord's presence and help in bringing him to this point in the journey, where he has finally become King over all of Israel. And he notes that God has done these things to make God's own name great — as a way of demonstrating God's presence and power in Israel so that people would understand and honor God.

That is well and good, but then see what comes up in the next chapter, which tells how the now-king David leads Israel to defeat some of her persistent enemies among the surrounding peoples:

When King Toi of Hamath heard that David had defeated the whole army of Hadadezer, Toi sent his son Joram to King David, to greet him and to congratulate him because he had fought against Hadadezer and defeated him. Now Hadadezer had often been at war with Toi. Joram brought with him articles of silver, gold, and bronze; these also King David dedicated to the LORD, together with the silver and gold that he dedicated from all the nations he subdued, from Edom, Moab, the Ammonites, the Philistines, Amalek, and from the spoil of King Hadadezer son of Rehob of Zobah.

David won a name for himself. When he returned, he killed eighteen thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt. He put garrisons in Edom; throughout all Edom he put garrisons, and all the Edomites became David’s servants. And the LORD gave victory to David wherever he went.

So David reigned over all Israel; and David administered justice and equity to all his people. Joab son of Zeruiah was over the army; Jehoshaphat son of Ahilud was recorder; Zadok son of Ahitub and Ahimelech son of Abiathar were priests; Seraiah was secretary; Benaiah son of Jehoiada was over the Cherethites and the Pelethites; and David’s sons were priests.

2 Samuel 8:9–18 NRSV

It's the opening sentence in 8:13 that strikes me here. I think it's not accidental that, even though this is still in the "upside" of David's trajectory, David is said to make a name for himself, rather than God. Indeed, David's preoccupation for his reputation and legacy becomes the major problem for the text moving forwards—but the seeds of his downfall are already planted here.

There's plenty else that is apparently good; David is defending the people from their enemies and is said to administer that important word pair "justice and righteousness". (מִשְׁפָּ֥ט וּצְדָקָ֖ה, here translated by the NRSV as "justice and equity.") David is being a good king here, by and large. And yet, I can't help but believe that in planting that phrase about making a name, and doing so right on the heels of a speech recognizing the need to magnify God's name, that the text is preparing us to understand what is at work as David falters in the coming chapters.

Sometimes the things that come to be our greatest obstacles and problems, are present even when things are going well—we just can't see them yet.

10/28/18 10/28/18

The Way of Mourning: A Corrective Alternative

There is so much to mourn in the world. Outbreaks of violence, the persistent ravages of poverty and injustice, all deserve grief on the way towards actions combatting them.We find it hard, of course, to keep up with the collective reports of the grievous state of humanity. There's too much to be born along, and we have neither the shoulders for the weight, or the skill in mourning to keep up. We've developed other skills instead. We deflect the grief with a variety of tactics, to various degrees of success.One road is to bypass the grief of the bad we see and experience today and to convert it immediately into fear for what could be tomorrow. This is the anxious way, one that looks past the present in exchange for fears—valid and unfounded—about what will come next. Too much of this is recognized as an emotional disorder, which plagues some 3 percent of the population, but of course many, many people live on a spectrum of anxiety about the future.Another path for dealing with the grievous reports we hear is the path of cynicism. Pop cynicism responds to bad news with mockery. It seeks neither to persuade or to provoke action—cynicism is not an outlet to change anything, but rather a style of reacting to things in a way that deflects responsibility. Cynicism says "There is nothing to be done by folks like me—the powers that be will continue to mess things up." Which may be true, to some great degree, but the cynic's route not only experiences disempowerment, but it actually chooses powerlessness as though it were virtue. It scoffs. It deflects. But it neither acts nor mourns, inserting a buffer of wit between itself and every problem.In world with overwhelming evil, cynicism is a pretty attractive option. It's a way of getting by. It allows people to live in a messed up world without feeling the struggle, and without entailing themselves in the responsibilities of action which take and take, sometimes without meaningful feedback of progress.

Grief is the sadness provoked by some negative event or state—whether personal losses or losses that we experienced empathically for others. Grief is something that comes to us, passively, whether we ask for it or not. It knocks on the door. But it can be deferred, which I think is a way of converting grief into anxiety. Or of course, it can just be sent away, deflected with cynicism.I suggest that an alternative to these ways lies in part in the practice of mourning. When we mourn, grief that we've received passively becomes something we actively experiences. We engage our grief, and express it. We lament and protest, shout, cry or weep. We actively feel, and do something with what we feel—maybe not in a way that definitely resolves the problem or loss at hand, but which converts some of that feeling, potential energy into doing movement in the world.I've been thinking more and more about mourning as a missing piece of our public discourse—there is much grief, to be sure, and too many occasions that bring about actual public mourning ceremonies. But the actual skill of mourning itself seems too distant from us as a people. Instead, we seem much more prone to defer and deflect the grief that comes our way by taking the paths of anxiety and cynicism. The story is of course more complicated and serves more nuance than I'm giving it here—fear, and the cynic's subversion of power both have a part to play in a healthy world I suppose, and a mix of them with the sort of mourning I'm thinking of is probably what we all need. Nonetheless, it seems to me that the mix is off, and we need a corrective of more mourning, and less fearfulness and less cynicism.As counterintuitive as it may be, we might all be better off with some proper laments.

(Some of my thinking about this was provoked by thinking through the sermon below.)

5/6/18 5/6/18

Life-Giver

I mentioned in the sermon yesterday an idea that’s essential to the way that I think about God. At the center of much of my thinking about God is that God is the “Creator”, the giver of life. The idea came up in the sermon as we worked though Acts 17 and its account of Paul in Athens. There in his famous mini-sermon at the Areopagus, Paul says,

“The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.” (Acts 17:24–25 NRSV)

Here, Paul offers to the Athenians a broad gate to begin thinking about God: God is the one who creates, and who gives life.There’s nothing particularly new or novel about that bit of theology; it is basic, fundamental. Increasingly, though, I find it useful to put the idea of God the creator and life-giver at the center of my theological thinking—and my prayers as well. When I offer my prayers to the life-giving God, it orients me to pray and live as one who receives life—and who must not waste the life I’m given, nor fail to appreciate its given-ness.I am a living being, given a gift. When I pray, I come to the giver.This came up in the psalms today, in my cycle of praying through them I was in Psalm 36:

“How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
They feast on the abundance of your house,
and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light we see light.”
(Psalms 36:7–9 NRSV)

Yes, God— you are the one with whom is the “fountain of life”. You are the very source of our vitality. You have made us alive—may your spirit lead us to live.Amen!