As If

Last week a friend reminded me of a commencement address delivered 5 years ago by David Foster Wallace in which he talks about the most valuable gift of a good education is the ability to make responsible and reasoned choices about what to think about. To introduce his point, he tells two goofy little stories.

The first: "There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, 'Morning boys. How's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, 'What the !@#$ is water?"

The second: "There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: 'Look, it's not like I don't have actual reaons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out, "O God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me."' And now in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. 'Well then, you must believe now,' he says, 'After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. 'No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.'"

After which, Wallace says:

"Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere...do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Ples there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogamatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a cloase-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.

35 years ago...

35 years ago today was a very hot Saturday, at least in Metamora, Illinois. My childhood friend, Dan, and I found some locals (including Peggy's kid sister, Becky, who was already at her tender age the best athlete among all those gathering that day) and played softball for a couple of hours, during which one of us unleashed a wild throw and dented the aluminum siding on Peggy's Mom and Dad's house (to this day, Becky insists it was my wild throw, but she threw so much harder than I). We got mildly sunburned, went back to the hotel to clean up and get ready for the evening's activities. Peggy had picked out brown tuxedos (brown was fashionable in August of 1975 - or so she said), so best man Dan and 4 friends from Eden Seminary - Gregg, Jim, Dave, and Greg - and I put them on and headed to the Christian Union Church in beautiful downtown Metamora.

I spent a lot of energy that late afternoon and early evening trying to appear unflustered, and the only person I was fooling, I'm sure, was me. Another friend started singing, Henry Nieschlag began playing the processional, and I spent the longest 2 minutes of my life trying not to pass out and wondering if Peggy was going to pull a runaway bride thing while a parade of sisters and women friends cascaded in ahead of her.

I knew it even then when I was young and kind of cocky - I knew I was "marrying up," and that Peggy was totally out of my league, and that I was so nuts about her that I would have simply been vaporized had she decided to not be with me. Convincing her to marry me, given what I felt was a calling and she called my "chosen profession" was no simple task. To this day I'm not completely sure whether I finally convinced her or if I just wore her down, but she didn't run (though she kind of tried to at the last minute -- seriously, Mr. Nieschlag was in the middle of the processional when she told her dad she couldn't go through with it and he said, "oh yes you will" and the rest is, as they say, history).

I am not making any of that up - even the brown tuxes! That Saturday 35 years ago, I was the luckiest guy on the planet. Still am today.

A Little Research Project

Here's a little research project for anyone who wants a head start on what we're talking about in church this Sunday, or who has nothing better to do with the last week before Labor Day.

For this project, you will need a copy of the Gospel of Luke (doesn't matter which version), a piece of paper, a pencil, and, if you're lousy at math, a calculator, slide rule, abacus or really smart young person to help you with the numbers.

The basic premise of the project is that thing we've talked about over and over again about reading the bible that requires no great knowledge of ancient languages and cultures, but only a grasp of simple arithmetic. That premise: if a piece of biblical literature repeats itself over and over again, or it the characters in that piece of biblical literature do the same things over and over again, we can be certain that the writer is not trying to bore us to tears, but rather trying to make sure that we understand how important something is.

To begin, sit down and read the Gospel of Luke in one sitting (it will take you no longer than 20 minutes if you choose to not be distracted.) Then, answer these questions (correct answers are below... read Luke, and don't cheat!)

1) How many chapters are there in the Gospel of Luke?

2) How many of those chapters deal with the trial and crucifixion of Jesus?

3) How many of them deal with the birth of John the Baptist and Jesus?

4) How many of them deal with Jesus' family tree?

5) Take the answer to #1, and subtract the answer to #2, #3, and #4. What do you get?

6) What very common human activity appears in the Gospel of Luke the same number of times as the answer to # 5?

7) What do you suppose the Gospel writer is trying to tell us?

Don't Peek!!
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1) 24
2) 3
3) 2
4) 1
5) 24 - 3 - 2 -1 = 18
6) Eating, feasting, sharing a meal, being fed. 18 times in 18 chapters; if you count all 24 chapters, that's 75% of the Gospel of Luke that include something about being at someone's house for dinner, or eating together or observing a feast, or feeding hungry people.
7) What do you think?

Required Reading

Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm, has written a book entitled War, about his time as an embedded reporter with soldiers in Afghanistan. In War, Junger turns his attention to the reality of combat—the fear, the honor and the trust among men in an extreme situation whose survival depends on their absolute commitment to one another. War is an on-the-ground account follows a single platoon through a 15 month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. Junger does not have a political axe to grind; he simply, and I think stunningly, reports what combat is really like, and how it really affects those in harm’s way.

Junger and his colleague Tim Hetherington have also made a full-length documentary entitled Restrepo; it is shot completely on site at an outpost in the Korengal Valley named for a platoon medic who was killed in action.

Warning: the language is often (usually?) pretty rough, but I’m guessing it has to be to be accurate. I think War should be required reading (and, perhaps Restrepo should be required viewing) for anyone in public office, and for anyone who wants to have a serious conversation about the personal and communal dynamics of armed conflict and for anyone who is sick and tired of empty political posturing on all sides.

If you want a flavor of this material, go to Junger’s website: www.sebastianjunger.org.

Obedience or Discipleship?

When you come north off the Lewis and Clark Bridges over the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers and turn toward what’s left of downtown Alton, Illinois, before you get to the square where one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates was held in 1858, if you look up the hill near where my brother-in-law’s furniture store used to be, you’ll see a huge, 93 foot high white granite column, topped by a 17 feet tall bronze statue of “Winged Victory,” a structure called “The Lovejoy Monument.” It marks the burial place of Elijah Parish Lovejoy, the son of a minister in our United Church of Christ predecessor family, the Congregationalists, who was born in 1802 in Albion, Maine. As an adult Lovejoy served the College Avenue Presbyterian Church in Alton, which he helped establish as a stop on the Underground Railroad, and where, much less significantly, I, 140 years later, served my first ever seminary internship.

Lovejoy was more widely known, and reviled, as the editor and publisher of first The St. Louis Observer and then The Alton Observer, abolitionist newspapers calling for an immediate end to the institution of slavery and even more immediate emancipation of all current slaves. On November 7^th, 1837, a mob unhappy with Lovejoy’s abolitionist newspaper, broke into his house, destroyed his 4^th printing press (three other presses had already been destroyed and thrown into the Mississippi by the same or similar mobs) and shot Lovejoy 5 times, killing him, and earning him the title of “the first casualty of the Civil War,” though that conflict wouldn’t start until 14 years later, and making my home town a symbol of the backwater ignorance and mob violence that was typical of the pro slavery mentality outside of the deep, deep South.

When word of Lovejoy’s murder reached the east, followers of firebrand abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, one of Lovejoy’s influences and mentors, were grief stricken and enraged. One of them, Wendell Phillips, a 26 year-old, born-to-privilege Harvard educated lawyer, launched a remarkable career that included tireless advocacy for abolition and emancipation, and, after the Civil War, an even less mainstream advocacy for the rights of Native Americans that continued until his death in 1864.

When responding to Lovejoy’s death, Phillips said something that I think informs not only that old and still resolving conflict, but also the whole nature of how discipleship is something far beyond obedience:

To be as good as, as faithful as our [forebears], we must be better. We must do

more. Imitation, obedience, are not discipleship.

Some think that the way to be a faithful person is to obey God, to follow a list of rules and regs and rituals that others before us of have used, thinking that the best way, or perhaps the easiest way to get things right is to things exactly the way they have always been done.

We in the church have a long record of requesting and settling for obedience, developing lists of minimum requirements for all sorts of things ranging from attendance and participation and financial support to determine whether or not people can worship with us or have communion with us or share our life with us. So the church has promised from time to time heaven and eternity of bliss for those who keep the rules, and eternal damnation for those who break the rules, while at the same time singing Amazing Grace and saying that all those decisions belong to God.

But what if Jesus does not call us to obedience? What if Jesus calls us instead to discipleship?

“Aren’t they the same thing?” you may ask.

Well, though they often, maybe even usually result in the same behavior, obedience and discipleship are not the same thing.

Obedience is easy.

Discipleship is hard.

Obedience is observable, measurable, and it’s easy to tell when you’re being obedient and when you’re not.

Discipleship is tougher, more demanding, requiring both energy and thought.

Obedience may be nothing more than a response to a suggestion or an accommodation that would be easier to just do than to think about.

Discipleship requires constant examination of motives, constant communication,

Obedience does not even require a relationship with the one being obeyed. Someone makes a suggestion, request, or demand, and you do it, and then “poof!” you are done, whether or not you know the one being obeyed.

Discipleship implies, no, discipleship requires a relationship that needs on-going commitment, intention, and attention.

Obedience is easy.

Discipleship is hard.

No Faith Journey Meeting on July 27th

Schedule conflicts abound for Tuesday evening, so we are going to postpone our next gathering until Tuesday, August 24th. Sorry for any inconvenience.

The More Things Change...

When I was 5, if you asked me who Jesus was, I’d tell you that he was the spooky guy in two places in my great grandmother’s living room. On one side of the room was a painting of the last judgment, with people standing next to their 1938 Plymouth on top of Hoover Dam, watching all the dead bodies flying up out of the cemetery to meet Jesus up in the clouds. On the other side of the room was Jesus’ face in a weird concave piece of china or pottery or something; this Jesus had a face with eerie eyes that would follow you wherever you were.

When I was 5, that’s who Jesus was. When I was 5, God was a close personal friend of Pastor Todd at the Evangelical and Reformed Church, someone my Gramps and my Daddy would call upon in times of upset and disaster, like losing a fish or hammering a thumb, and the “great and good” guy we intoned at mealtime, and the one we asked our “soul to keep” at bedtime, even though I hadn’t a clue about what that meant and I had absolutely no desire “die before I wake.”

When I was 5, good little boys didn’t talk like Gramps and Daddy did when they lost a fish or hammered their hand. And when I was 5, the whole point of church seemed to be to learn how to live so that if I died (which I had no intention of doing) that God wouldn’t let me burn in hell, but would take me to heaven to live with him and the guy whose eyes wouldn’t stop watching me in my great-grandmother’s living room. When I was 5, Mrs. Kramer, my Sunday School teacher, said that the most important thing was “love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

When I was 19, if you asked me who Jesus was, I’d tell you that he lived a long time ago, and that he was like a cross between a medicine man and a flower child who did marvelous things that no one understood, who always made the people in authority uncomfortable, and who was killed by the people in authority just to keep his mouth shut and their thumb on the people. When I was 19, Jesus was the peacenik revolutionary who was misunderstood and oppressed and who did great things in spite of it, and who ended up getting killed for it, just like all the really good people, like Medgar Evers and Dr. King and RFK and all the rest.

When I was 19, that’s who Jesus was. When I was 19, God was remote, distant, OK but irrelevant, someone I more than occasionally enjoined like my Gramps and my father before me. A “watchmaker” God was the way Thomas Jefferson and John Locke talked about it, and, rational college man that I was, that seemed to be the only thing that held up under critical examination.

When I was 19, all people with lots of money were evil and all people who were poor were victims of oppression. And when I was 19, the whole point of church seemed to be to work for a day the oppressed got their chance to be in charge, and that the church was remarkably backwards in catching on to that. When I was 19, the most important thing, it seemed to me was to “love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Now nearly four decades since I was 19, if you ask me who Jesus is, I’ll tell you that Jesus is the model for faithful living, that his way of making himself available and his way of giving himself away is what John’s gospel means when it says that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life.” I’ll tell you that God is the creative, loving energy behind and in and beyond everything that is, that God is in the “seeking and finding” business, that God makes God known to us in so many ways, but mostly in glimpses—of a child whose life we can touch, of a person on the “edges” of life struggling with what comes next, of a celebration of new life and new hope, of a person who needs help. I’ll tell you that, while God doesn’t revel in some of the petty ways we hurt each other, God doesn’t give up on us, either, and I’ll tell you that if you want to know God, you ought to pay close attention to Jesus. I’ll tell you that that’s what I think it means to understand that Jesus lived and died so that we might have life. I’ll tell you that I don’t think it’s all as mystical and mysterious or as rigid and unyielding as some of us have been told. And I’ll tell you that I don’t think Jesus or God have any ego problems that need constant stroking by people purporting to be faithful, and that the biggest deal is not whether or not we make an intellectual and verbal declaration of how Jesus is our Lord and Savior and then go on and do any fool thing we want with our lives, but that we take Jesus seriously enough to live and love the way he showed us.

Because, you see, whether at 5, or 19, or 119, the heart of the whole matter is what Mrs. Kramer, my Sunday School teacher, said that Jesus said that the most important thing was “love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”