Worship and The Pastor

Last week I attended The Festival of Homiletics in Atlanta, an annual national preaching conference.  There were 2,000 people in attendance, many (if not most) of them pastors.  It was an incredible and inspiring event.  I heard nationally-known pastors, preachers, homiletics teachers, civil rights leaders and musicians.  I felt as if a long-dry cup was finally getting filled with rich wine--and it never overflowed.  I had no idea how much I needed people to lead me in worship.  As I sat in the Ebenezer Baptist Church--where Martin Luther King, Jr. preached--or heard the pipes of the organ at Peachtree United Methodist Church open up, I felt beyond blessed.

Whenever I get a chance to worship, I am reminded of what a transforming experience it can be.  I also recognize a deep need within myself to worship.  Sometimes I feel as if I am clinging to the words of the sermon or the liturgy like my kids clung to me the first time I took them into a pool.  The hymns connect me to strangers as we stand side-by-side and sing with the abandon only pastors who are temporarily released from leading worship can display.

A lie we pastors tell ourselves is, "I'll still be able to worship while I lead worship."  Not true.  I go into a zone while I lead worship--it's a fog I don't leave until I leave the sanctuary.  The one moment that breaks me out of it is when the lay assisting ministers look me in the eye after we've served communion and give me the bread and wine, declaring them Christ's body and blood.  I hear the words, "for you," and I'm able to step back for a moment and remember this worship is about God and not me.

When I go too long without worshiping myself, I lose track of the purpose of worship.  I start to worry about it getting boring and stale.  I see it as a reflection of me and my abilities and I forget there are others in this church who can plan, lead and create worship just as well (if not better) than me.  I forget it is an act of God and we are participants.  I forget how much people need it.  I also forget how much people are desperate to hear a sermon preached for them.

It was beyond wonderful to hear so many inspiring preachers last week.  They challenged me to look more closely at justice, community and acts of faith.  Their preaching made me want to better my own preaching.  But they couldn't replicate the honor I have--the privilege of preaching to the same congregation week after week.  I get to preach to people I know and love, people I see day in and day out.  I get to interpret the Scriptures for them.  My sermons are not academic essays.  They live within a community.

I may not be able to worship as much as I'd like, but I have the great opportunity to create and carry out worship week after week.  I get to provide liturgies and sermons people need.  I'm not doing it alone, for God is present whenever two or more are gathered.  And I need to remember to let myself sit in the pews too, for I need it as much--if not more--than those who get to sit in them regularly.

Doubt Part II

In college, I went to listen to a Holocaust survivor speak on campus about her life.  During her talk, someone asked her about her religious beliefs.  She responded by stating she had no belief in God.  A student in the crowd stood up and pressed her on her lack of faith.  I remember feeling deeply uncomfortable as they exchanged words.  The speaker said she witnessed too much suffering and horror to believe in God.  She was firm.  “I can’t believe.”

As a naïve college student, raised in the church, her words shook me.  I still remember the proud look in her eyes and the confident way she spoke about her beliefs—or lack thereof.  The reaction rooted in my gut surprised me the most.  I couldn’t relate to her experiences, but I felt her perspective.  Of course she couldn’t believe in God.  My ability to relate to her scared me.  If I could understand her lack of belief, did that mean my own beliefs were weak?

This memory came back to me this morning as I listened to a program about atheism on MPR.  It included an interview with Teresa MacBain, a former Methodist pastor who recently claimed publicly that she is an atheist.  This comes soon after I saw an interview on a major news network with an ELCA pastor who also claimed a personal loss of faith.  My first reaction was suspicion—not of their claims but of the public way they chose to share them.  Anytime someone purposefully looks for attention from the media, I question their motivation.  A story about a pastor losing faith and living a lie is juicy in our current culture of arm’s-length compromise.  Either you have belief, or you don’t.  Either you embrace atheism, or you don’t.  I hope they are trying to encourage conversation and mutual understanding, but I am doubtful.

I don’t claim to know what it is like to be an atheist.  I don’t know what it’s like to experience judgment for my lack of belief.  I would never claim a person needs belief in Christ in order to be moral or lead a life of service to others.  To feel sorry for their lack of belief is a patronizing and unhelpful stance.  To maintain a distance from others because of their different ideas about God leaves a real void.  I am constantly fed by the brilliant writing of Roger Ebert, himself a staunch unbeliever. 

I think, as believers, we are unable to separate our intellectual response to atheism from our inner reality—we understand.  We truly understand it often feels impossible to believe in a loving God when the world is so full of violence, the Bible feels so full of contradictions, and we have experienced long stretches of lonely prayers—sometimes for years—that fall to the floor rather than rise to heaven. 

I don’t know why belief takes root in some and not in others.  Children who are raised in the same family, go to the same church and experience the same religious instruction can and do have incredibly different belief systems.  Yet I do not believe faith is all-or-nothing.  I struggle daily with the absurdity of belief.  The doubts and questions rise up as naturally and quickly as the stubborn dandelions that are taking over my lawn.  But I believe God is bigger than my lack of faith.  God does not depend of my ability to believe.  Rather, God works despite my unbelief. 

I can only tell others of my experiences with God.  Jesus reached out to those unlike himself with care and respect.  His integrity never wavered, and he himself uttered words of painful doubt.  I respect an atheist’s right to unbelief.  I also pray my own struggles with faith lead me to compassion rather than judgment.   

But I will also be honest about my own imperfect faith.  My faith is rooted in the cross of Jesus Christ.  Jesus meets me where I am most weak, unfaithful, vulnerable and broken.  No longer do I need to fear my lack of unbelief.  Rather, I trust in a God who knows my struggles and—despite them—gives me hope.  I believe on my darkest days of unfaithfulness God is still working in my life and the life of the world, restoring creation and mending relationships.  I also daringly believe God is working in the hearts of all people, whether they believe or not.

I refuse to believe Christians and atheists are facing each other across a wide span.  Our first instinct is to be afraid of those who think differently than us.  But God calls us into community with all people, and for good reason—this community is enriching and faith-stretching.  My belief is God is present in all of it.     

I Deny the Resurrection

I used this video of a talk by Peter Rollins in my sermon yesterday.  We all experience faithful doubt.  This video calls us out of our tendency to worry too much about our own ability to believe.  Peter asks us to look at denying the resurrection in a whole new way.

You can read his blog post about this topic too.

Easter Sermon

Sermon for April 8, 2012

Text: Mark 16:1-8

Let us pray: Risen Lord, place your Easter miracle in our hearts today and everyday.  Amen. 

It feels like Easter today.

Spring has come early, so early that the trees growing greener everyday even though it’s only the beginning of April.  We almost DARE to put away our snow blowers.  It’s a little cool today, but still warm enough to wear our Easter best. 

It feels like Easter in church too.  The rainbow banners are up, the festival songs are sung, the brass and choirs and bells are helping to lead worship today.  We say with gusto, “Christ is Risen!  He is Risen indeed!”  It’s a joyous day, full of fanfare and celebration—arguably the biggest Sunday of the year.  We gather to celebrate the resurrected Christ, the one who gives us hope and joy.

It feels like Easter…or does it?

Not according to Mark.  In the middle of all our celebrating, we hear a quiet, stark story of resurrection from the gospel of Mark.  This story is not full of fanfare or celebration or joy.  Instead, it is full of fear, trembling, silence, and failure.  Is this the story of a miracle?

The women—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome get up before the sun after the Sabbath, three days after Jesus’ crucifixion.  They silently creep to the tomb, carrying spices to anoint Jesus’ body.  They were full of fear, for it was dangerous to approach the tomb of such a notorious traitor of the Roman government. 

They are completely alone, for everyone else has abandoned Jesus. 

The centurion has done his job and declared Jesus dead. 

The Roman officials no longer need to bother with him. 

The men sealed his body in the tomb. 

The disciples, having abandoned Jesus at the cross, are no where to be found. 

And so the women approach utterly alone, as the sun is rising, already feeling like failures because they don’t even know if they’ll be able to move the huge stone covering the tomb. 

This is our Easter story for today.  This is what Easter feels like.

Once the women reach the tomb, they find the stone rolled back.  Fear grips them as they wonder if Jesus’ body has been stolen.  They wonder if they will be attacked.  When they finally look into the tomb, they find it empty other than a young man, dressed in white.  They become even more alarmed.  They don’t recognize him, and they don’t know why he is there.  They are astonished.

He says to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.  But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you."

He gives them very clear and simple instructions.  He proclaims Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.  He tells them to go tell the disciples and meet Jesus is Galilee.  And how do the women respond?

They run away.  They are seized by terror and amazement.  Other translations describe them as beside themselves, trembling, bewildered, astonished, distressed, terrified.  In the literal Greek, they are gripped by ecstasy—in a frenzy or a trance.

And they say nothing to anyone.

And here ends the gospel of Mark.

It’s a terribly unsatisfying ending.  It’s so unsatisfying that later copiers of the text added their own endings—two different ones—to try to wrap up the story.  Yet we know from careful study these two endings were not written by Mark.  They were tacked on later because people were convinced that something was missing.  Surely Mark didn’t mean to end the gospel with fear, trembling and silence.  We wonder if maybe he keeled over while writing that last sentence.  In fact, the Greek ends in the middle of a sentence.  There must have been a page or two lost.  Some people, even current Biblical scholars, are still convinced that Mark didn’t mean to end it like that.

Yet we have to work with what we have.  And we need to ask ourselves the question:  what if Mark has really wanted to end it that way?  This ending is in line with Mark’s style.  Through his gospel Jesus tells people many times to keep silent and yet they tell.  In this ending, the women are told to “go and tell” yet they keep silent.

This is not the Easter we imagine.  This story doesn’t feel like Easter.

Notice Mark’s account of the resurrection is stark.  There are no trumpets, to pyrotechnics, no earthquakes, no angels flying around.  This gospel would not make a very good movie.  There is no resurrected Jesus talking to them and greeting them on the road. 

The women are terrified and awe-struck, but not by the special effects.  Instead, they are terrified by what the young man says to them.  “He is not here, He is risen.  Go, and tell.”

These few words turn their lives around in an instant.  They had three days to absorb Jesus’ death, and they were going through the rituals that would allow them to wrap up his life and put him in their past.  In a way, it was comforting to them to prepare to embalm his body, for it was a ritual they knew, a way to honor the past and complete the burial process. 

They did not expect their futures to suddenly break open.  They did not expect a new and risky venture would be offered to them.  They were ready to finish the embalming, go home, and continue on with their lives.  Instead, they are brought into a new hope, a new direction, and a scary prospect.  With Jesus’ resurrection, the world has changed.  They have new responsibilities and opportunities.  They come as mourners, and they leave as disciples.  There is no road map for them; all they know is they are to go meet Jesus, for he has gone ahead of them to Galilee.

We, like the women, have expectations of Easter.  In fact, Easter morning is heaped with expectations.  There are lots of “shoulds” when it comes to planning and attending these services.  There should be lots of music and fanfare.  There should be the Hallelujah chorus at the end.  There should be a fantastic sermon. There should be egg bake (you knew I couldn’t let that go).  All of you have expectations placed on you this morning as well.  You should be dressed in your Easter best.  Your children shouldn’t be too hyped up on sugar at 8:30 am and should be well-behaved.  You should feel a swelling of joy in your heart during the service and leave with a stronger faith than when you came.  There is no room here for doubt, or grief, or sadness, or skepticism.

Yet that's exactly what we find in Mark's story of resurrection.

What a relief it is to read Mark, a true realist.  What a relief it is to know the women ran away when confronted by the resurrection.  It’s good to know the disciples don’t even show up at the tomb, they are so convinced Jesus will never rise from the dead.  What a relief to know that first Easter morning was quiet and full of fear, trembling, and unbelief. 

All of this, this is not Easter.  This is celebration and praise and glorious worship, yes, but Easter is more than this. 

Easter is tomorrow morning when you wake up to face a new week, tired and not quiet ready. 

Easter is when you find yourself in a hospital room with someone you love, facing a new future you are unprepared for. 

Easter is when fear grips you so hard you can hardly stand, much less function. 

Easter is when God places a longing in your heart that won’t leave you alone until you have to embrace it.

Easter is God meeting us just as we are and giving us a new future.

We know God got the word out about the resurrection somehow, even if the women couldn’t speak.  We know the young man told the women specifically to go and tell the disciples—and Peter—naming him by name.  The disciple who had abandoned Christ completely, publicly denying him three times, is called by name as one who needs to know about the resurrection. 

That’s what feels like Easter.  It is God meeting us wherever we are.

So if you feel as if you are too skeptical, too full of grief, too afraid to face your life, too stuck, too hopeless, too much a failure, Easter is for you.  The resurrection does not just come on Easter morning here at church.  Resurrections also happen in quiet places when we least expect them. 

Easter is God breaking into our darkest places to give us new life.

Easter is when we run away from God and God follows us, chases us down, until we are found.

Easter is when God looks skepticism right in the eye and gives us the courage to dare to believe the hope found in the resurrection.

May God fill your hearts with hope and give you the courage to trust in the promises of the miracle spoken to the women at the tomb, and may God use you to speak this good news to others.

Amen.      

Dear God

God,

I think Holy Week started one week too early.  I thought I was going to walk the way of the cross next week, and I’ve been planning for it for a very long time.  I have all the people in place, the liturgies written, and the hymns picked out.  The choir has been rehearsing and they sound great.  I thought there were only a few last minute details to attend to.  I thought there was lots of time to write my Easter sermon.

I wasn’t ready for Holy Week to come so soon.  I wasn’t ready for phone calls from grieving family members and funeral directors.  I wasn’t prepared for calls from ICU nurses telling me I need to come as soon as possible.  None of this—the death, sadness, or grief—was supposed to happen until next week. 

Maybe it’s why I burst into tears after someone from church called with one more question and I couldn’t—just couldn’t—answer it, and I was short with her.  Maybe it’s why on Sunday afternoon I slept on the couch and my perpetually busy almost-two-year-old quietly sat with me and let me rest, her little warm body nestled into mine.  Maybe it’s why my heart broke when a gentle man looked at me and said, “You have a pastoral heart,” and I thought it was the greatest compliment I’d received in a long time.  Maybe it's why I feel so grateful, and humble, and sad.

Oh God, this has been a Holy Week.  Thank you for showing me Holy Week cannot be planned, just like the cross is not something we can set aside and take out when we feel like it.  We walk the way of the cross each day, falling to our knees as life takes our breath away.  Thank you for flooding me with humility as I realize sometimes it is all too much, and I have no choice but to let others help me and to rely on you. 

Thank you for reminding me the cross is not only a word of violence and death, but a word of joy and hope.  For only through the cross can we see your unconditional and passionate love for us.  Only through the cross can we realize you have walked our paths and know our sorrows.  Thank you for the holiness that can come out of difficult days.  Thank you for showing me that even the most careful plans do not give us security—that comes from you. 

Thank you for reminding me that every week is Holy Week, and Easter is coming soon.  

    

Amen.  May it be so.

Risky Business

Faith and risk go hand-in-hand.  Some may say faith is in danger when doubt creeps in, or when the attendance at churches drops, or when immorality runs rampant.  I say faith is most at risk when we get too comfortable.  Once we find ourselves settling into life, feeling content and warm like lazy cats stretched out in the sun, it’s time to rethink how we are living.  If we are living too safely, protecting ourselves first and giving in to paralyzing fears, we are missing out on the joys of faith.  Risk looks different to everyone; what is scary for one may not be scary for another.  Yet that is the beauty and challenge of faith—it forces each of us to grow, to stretch, and to step outside ourselves.  

Self-doubt continually whispers temptations into my ear like, “Church needs to be flashier.  People want to be entertained.  Why don’t you have a coffee shop in the narthex?”  It also tells me I am too introverted, too serious, and not charismatic enough to be an effective leader.  If we are not careful, self-doubt (a great tool of the devil!) will fold us into ourselves and we will lose our vision.  We lose the ability to grow.  Risk becomes impossible.  The hard truth is sometimes it is most risky to embrace who we are.

This year the Worship Team encouraged me to use prayer as the theme for Lent.  I first began to think of all the ways I could create experiential prayer in the Wednesday night services—how I could pack in various themes and creative props.  These are my gut reactions to my perceived inadequacies—if I can make the worship entertaining, that will make up for my introversion.  Little did I know this year’s Lenten series at Christ the King would become a personal challenge for me.    

A fellow pastor directed me to Prayer Around the Cross, a tradition started at Holden Village, a retreat center deep in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State.  The more I learned about this worship style, the more excited I became to use it during Lent.  I discovered this tradition is used once a week at Holden, and I decided if they can do it once a week, we can do it for five Wednesdays in a row.  I hesitantly gave up all my plans for creative, dynamic worship and instead planned for silence, deep prayer, and lots and lots of repetition.  Each week we repeat what we did the week before.  Each service we sing short phrases of songs over and over.  It goes against every instinct I have to make worship fun and exciting (as fun and exciting as it gets in a Lutheran church…).  I intentionally simplified everything.  I was nervous.  I forgot to trust that they Holy Spirit would move. 

I know this type of worship isn’t for everyone, and it is risky in many ways.  The cross is laid front and center with boxes of sand placed around it.  The service provides a time for people to come forward, kneel or sit around the cross, light candles, place them in the sand, and pray.  It’s risky for people to come forward and pray in front of the sanctuary.  It’s risky to have so many candles lit and moved by many people, including kids, in semi-darkness.  It’s risky to sing simple songs, repeating the same few words over and over without using hymnals.  It’s outside of our comfort zones. 

I'm happy to report the services have turned out to be deeply meaningful, and the repetition has created unexpected little traditions.  Four Confirmation students love to walk in candles at the beginning of each service.  The same two boys have embraced the job of turning down the lights for prayer.  The kids have been leaders in prayer and come forward to light the candles first each week.  Yet my favorite new tradition comes at the end of each service.  I like to leave the candles burning for a while as people leave the sanctuary.  Kids now gather around the still-burning flames, lighting the leftover candles and placing them in the sand.  They try to lick their fingers and pinch out the flames.  They gleefully blow them all out at my cue.  I see them playing with fire, but I think it is much more than that.  They are interacting with the sacred.  The candles represent the prayers of the congregation, and the kids love touching the prayers, watching them, adding to them.  The beauty of the candles draws them like moths to a porch light.  It’s risky to let them that near to the flames, but it gives them a chance to be close to holiness.

When I planned these services, I was most concerned about boring the kids.  What a silly worry it turned out to be.  They instead have been an example of what it means to embrace quiet worship, to joyfully try something new, and to find meaning in repetition.  I don’t plan to make every worship experience at Christ the King quiet and reflective, but the kids have been examples to me of how important it is to take risks, and how these risks can lead to finding faith in authentic new ways.  For we are all children of God—saved, loved, cherished as we are—and it is out of this identity that we can experiment, fail, and find joy in the risk that is faith.  And sometimes it is best to just get out of the way so the Holy Spirit can move.

"And sooner or later, if we follow Christ, we have to risk everything in order to gain everything. We have to gamble on the invisible and risk all that we can taste and feel. But we know the risk is worth it, because there is nothing more insecure than the transient world. For this world as we see it is passing away." - Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude        

Jesus and the Mommy Wars

I had no idea when I had my first child that I had entered into a new subculture full of unspoken expectations, judgment and searing competition—this thing called parenthood.  I remember being a little uncomfortable when a nurse came into our prenatal classes to talk about breastfeeding in a way that made me squirm in my seat.  She told us about using her breast pump in the passenger seat of a car while her husband drove—because breast milk is that important.  

And so I entered into the Mommy Wars (a phrase I detest).  The only way I knew how to deal with the feelings of guilt and inadequacy I had as a working mom was to turn my anxiety onto the families around me.  I thought of all the reasons why it was good for my son to be in day care.  I thought of all the ways kids with stay-at-home parents might be disadvantaged.  I desperately sought for solid answers that told me I was making the right decisions for my child.

I soon realized this did me no good.  For we, as parents, are all in the same boat, and none of us know how to deal with the storms that rock it day in and day out.  None of us know how to deal with the constant pressures of parenthood—the mind-numbingly boring days that somehow still leave us exhausted as well as the days we’re so busy we think longingly of the days we could sit down and read an entire book.  No one knows what to do when our child throws a monster tantrum in front of the entire Confirmation class and their families and the deep shame makes us feel as if we’re standing in front of them stripped naked.  We’re all terrified that someone will find out our most terrible secret—that we struggle with parenting and sometimes we don’t do it right.

A hard part of parenting is the lack of outer awards and accolades.  No one gave me a medal for breastfeeding my kids.  No one cheered when my son became potty-trained or read his first word.  I didn’t get a certificate the day he took the big step onto the bus for his first day of kindergarten.  And so we try to compete, for as long as my child is developmentally ahead of another, as long as I breast feed longer than another mother, as long as I worked hard enough at labor to avoid the dreaded c-section, as long as my kids only eat organic food—well, then I must be a good parent.  Because otherwise, how would I know?

The truth is that none of it matters.  Parenting makes us all crazy, and we all struggle.  Parenting has a wicked way of turning us inside ourselves, shrinking our worlds into a few rooms of a house or apartment, cutting us off from the world around us.  We find ourselves spending our days looking up the merits and safety of various sippy cups on the internet (not that I’ve ever done that).  We start to look at other parents as sources of competition rather than support.  We have to fight against the isolation and panic, for the media saturates us with messages that we need the newest book, toy, organic food, and on and on…otherwise our children are doomed!

Thankfully, this lifestyle is not sustainable.  God calls us to community, and the church has the fantastic opportunity to give people the gift of relationship.  I am so grateful for the mom’s group at my church.  It is a group focused on shared struggles and rejoicing in each other’s achievements—a counter-cultural message.  I left the last meeting I attended saying, “They know what it’s really like, and I’m not the only one who feels this way.”  This is God’s community.

The church also calls us out of our isolation.  A clear message in Scripture is God’s desire for us to care for the vulnerable around us.  This includes not only our children, but all children.  What if we took the time we put into, say, searching for the right sippy cup, and gave it to organizations that support needy children?  What if we lifted up the single mothers who are working two jobs and still can’t afford decent child care?  What if we took the energy we put into competing with other parents and worked to make early child education available to all kids?  God calls us out of ourselves into the world around us.  In doing so, we will teach our own children they are not the center of the universe.  We will also teach them compassion and the joy found in serving others.

 “The little children were being brought to him in order that he might lay hands on them and pray.  The disciples spoke sternly to those who brought them; but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”  Matthew 19:13-14