Bonus Week!

Welcome to BONUS WEEK! This is not a recognized holiday, season, feast, or celebration in the real world, so don't worry if you didn't pick out the red dates in your calendar. But it's a time that just about everyone I know who works in a church is celebrating. This year, because of a quirk in the way the dates fall out, Advent doesn't begin the Sunday right after Thanksgiving. This year we have an extra week between Thanksgiving and the beginning of Advent. It seems like a very small thing, but the extra week is HUGE. It meant that last week, during the three-day holiday week of Thanksgiving, we didn't have to squeeze in Advent preparation as well. It means that we have extra time this week to iron out the details of our Advent worship and seasonal church programs before the hustle begins. 

This is really exciting for me because Advent is one of my favorite seasons. I love the intentional way that we prepare for Jesus' birth. I love the return to praying and striving for the kingdom of God. I love the way our worship builds up toward the celebrations on Christmas Eve. And this year I have extra time to get ready for this, my favorite time of year. This week I have an opportunity to take a deep breath before the plunge into the season. 

The extra time has allowed me to get my heart in order. This year has been busy and full of transitions, and amid all of the activity I've slipped a bit in my spiritual disciplines. So this year I've decided to really rededicate myself to spiritual growth during Advent. And I'm going to use this blog to do it. 

In years past I've utilized this blog to observe Advent in a variety of ways. In 2009, my first year as a full-time pastor, I posted a picture each day of Advent to remind myself of the joy of the season in the midst of all of the busyness. In 2010, I wrote a brief reflection each day. In 2011 I forgot my blog completely in my focus on ordination papers. But this year I'm back, and with a new plan. 

Beginning on the first Sunday of Advent, December 2, 2012, I'm joining with my congregation in engaging daily readings for the season. My lead pastor put together a compilation of daily Scriptures for every day of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. I'm going to read those texts each day and write a prayer based upon those passages. I hope to post the prayers here, along with the text citations. As much as I'd like to say this is my Advent gift to you, it isn't. This is not an altruistic gesture. This is accountability. I hope that, by posting the prayers here, I'll have a measure of accountability to make sure that I read the texts and pray over them deeply. And I hope you'll pray for me, and with me, as I refocus on what's really important in this season: getting ready for the Emmanuel to arrive.

Whelmed

"You can be overwhelmed and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?"
"I think you can in Europe." - Dialogue from the movie "10 Things I Hate About You"

I find the English language fascinating. I am amazed at the relationship between words like flammable, inflammable, and noninflammable. I was discussing our linguistic oddities with a friend today, when I brought up the overwhelmed/underwhelmed/whelmed situation. And on this Thanksgiving day, I began to wonder: What does it say about our American culture that there's no such word as whelmed in our vocabulary?

Our culture is full of things that are overwhelming. We're overwhelmed with work and stress. We're constantly bombarded with noise and color that assault our senses. We're focused on a sort of arrogant overabundance, where we always want more, more, more of everything. We want bigger houses, bigger meals, more possessions, more money... We always seem to want more than enough.

And yet, even with all of that abundance, we are often unhappy. The constant barrage of sensory experiences is so great that we're never really impressed or satisfied by much of anything. We are unimpressed by the world, by what we see and hear. Our desires and expectations have such a high threshold that nothing seems to meet them. There's never enough for us to be satisfied, and we find ourselves underwhelmed.

It seems that what we really need, what we should really be striving for, is to be whelmed. It seems to me that becoming whelmed involves two parts. The first is stepping down from the pursuit of the overwhelming. We need to reset our expectations. We need to focus on simplicity. What do we really need? What are our genuine necessities? When is enough truly enough? As a pastor colleague reminded us in worship this morning, the three things we really need are food, shelter, and companionship. I'm assuming that most of you who are reading this blog have at least two of those three, since technology like computers and wireless routers usually follows after those two on Mazlo's hierarchy of needs.) We all have what we really need. So why are we looking for more?

That's the other step in becoming whelmed: learning to recognize all that we do have. We have so much to be thankful for. We have food, and not just a single serving per day of food that is bland but meets our nutritional requirements, but a variety of abundant, delicious, healthy (and not so healthy) foods from which we can choose. We have shelters with indoor plumbing, climate control, storage space, and creature comforts. And we have companionship. We have the companionship of family, friends, coworkers, colleagues, congregations, and even acquaintances and beloved ones who are far away, yet connected to us through various forms of technology. How GREAT is that? Seriously, aren't all of our food options wondrous? Aren't our homes amazing? And what greater blessing could there be than the relationships we enjoy with one another?

Friends, I believe what we really need to do is learn to be whelmed. We need to overcome the social pressure for more, bigger, better and instead seek enough. If we can reduce our needs and find joy in what we have instead of constantly striving for more, I think we can find deep contentment and happiness. Plus that will leave us a lot more time, energy, and resources to share with others, so that maybe everyone can be whelmed. And that's really the goal, right? The goal is for the striving and fighting to cease and everyone to have enough. That sounds a lot like the kingdom of God. And it could start with all of us becoming whelmed.

Preach This?

Ecclesiastes 3 promises that there are seasons for everything. A season for mourning and a season for laughing. A season for peace and a season for war. A season for casting away stones and a season for gathering stones together, whatever that means. There are also, apparently, season for blogging and seasons for forgetting to blog. After a very long season of forgetting to blog, I'm back. I hope this will be a season for blogging. 

I will say, though, that my season of not blogging was not a season of not writing. In fact, I've been doing some of the most challenging writing I've done in a long time. Just not in this medium. 

It all began in the spring, when our church staff got together for a planning day. As we discussed plans for fall classes and themes for the upcoming school year, our minister of youth and young adults came up with a brilliant suggestion. "Why don't we have an emphasis on the Hebrew Bible throughout the fall? We could focus all of our classes on the Hebrew Scriptures and preach on the Old Testament lectionary texts in worship. We could tell the stories people aren't familiar with and look at the texts we usually skip over in favor of the gospels and epistles." The light of excitement went around the staff room. Yes! We could tell the stories from the Hebrew Bible, build Biblical literacy, deepen the Scriptural knowledge of the congregation! I threw myself into planning a Bible Study based on the idea of a road trip through Genesis. We dove into Hebrew Bible preparations with great enthusiasm. 

Then the other shoe dropped: I decided to plan worship for the fall. I purchased the lectionary worship planner for the year (September-to-September... why isn't it structured for either the secular calendar or the church calendar?) and took a look at the assigned texts for the coming months. And there they were, those passages that preachers fear to face. I had expected the stories from children's Sunday School: Adam & Eve, Noah, Abraham & Sarah & Hagar, Moses, Joshua, Deborah. I had expected readings from the prophets, the dense imagery of Ezekiel or perhaps the dense imagery of Isaiah. But what I found in that worship planner wasn't any of those things. What I found was wisdom literature. I discovered that in September I'd be preaching on the Song of Solomon, the Proverbs 31 woman, and Esther. In October I'd have to tackle Job. And in November, the story of Ruth. I had to preach on all of them. I didn't get the classic stories, no. The Hebrew Scriptures in this lectionary cycle had enough sex to put thirteen-year-old boys in fits of giggles for months, enough philosophical thought to satisfy a classics major at a liberal arts college, and enough gender trouble to make the feminist in me scream with rage. 

Somewhere in my panic, I'm fairly certain I heard the Almighty chuckle. 

So I put on my newly-bestowed stole and my big-girl-pastor-heels and got to work. I prayed for wisdom. I dug into passages I hadn't wrestled with since my seminary classes with Dr. Petersen. I exegeted. I pored over commentaries. I prayed some more. I wrote sermons, then called my Catholic, Brethren, and Baptist advisers (thanks, family!) and ran ideas past them. I prayed for courage. And I preached. 

With the help of the Holy Spirit, I talked about sex from the pulpit without blushing. I remembered God's wisdom imparted through the words of my seminary classmates and clergy colleagues as I tried to cut away the pink-covered expectation baggage from the Proverbs 31-woman. I taught my congregation about the traditions of Purim and we all booed at Haman. I poked a stick at the pinata of Biblical literalism that was hanging over Job. And I endeavored to preach prose interpreting the poetry of the Psalms. They were not all great sermons. But they were genuine attempts to delve into the challenging parts of our sacred book. I figured that if I, with some serious theological training, had difficulty with these passages, my congregation might, too. And I felt the Spirit challenging us to gird our congregational loins and wrestle with the passages God placed before us.

By the time I got to planning November, I was looking for trouble. After preaching some of the most terrifying passages in the Bible, my attitude had shifted from, "Oh, no! Another hard passage!" to "Troubling text? BRING IT ON!" That's when I decided to put a cherry on the top of this Old-Testament-Worship-Sundae. After praying about it for a while, I decided to do a pre-Advent series focused on some more hard texts. Inspired by the challenging stories we'd been looking at throughout the fall, I decided to plan a sermon series on the "black sheep" in Jesus' genealogy. So for four weeks, I'm taking on the stories of: 1) Tamar and Judah, 2) Rahab and Salmon, 3&4) Naomi, Ruth, & Boaz. That's right. We're getting ready for Advent by talking about sex, prostitution, fidelity, family, and tradition. Some days I shake my head and wonder what I was thinking in choosing this path. But other days I feel blessed. I feel blessed by the challenge of God's Word and passages that I cannot address comfortably. I feel blessed that God is disturbing my assumptions and pushing me to go deeper. And I feel abundantly blessed that I have friends, colleagues, family members, and a congregation who are willing to engage the questions and go deeper with me. 

Talking with my sister this afternoon, I expressed relief that once Advent begins I'll return to the New Testament Scriptures. She said, "So, away from the challenges of the Old Testament." I replied, "Yes, back to something fluffy, like the gospels." Laughing, she replied, "I don't think you can describe the gospels as fluffy. Is any part of the Bible fluffy?" We both pondered this for a moment, then concluded that, apart from the occasional Psalm, none of the Bible is fluffy. None of it is easy. It isn't meant to be. 

The Bible is dense and challenging, meant to be pondered and chewed on, wrestled with and rested in, doubted and trusted. If we're getting only reassurance from it and never struggling with it, we're probably not reading it right. 

So, on to a new season. A season of New Testament texts. A season of Advent and Christmas and Epiphany. But I hope all of them will be seasons of wrestling as this one has been. Maybe when I approach the Christmas texts, perhaps the most familiar, comforting texts of all, I'll read them with the same sense of challenge and prophetic discomfort that I've come to cherish in this season of learning. 

The Prophetic Voice

God created us to live in community, in relationships with people who love us, who challenge us, who hold us accountable. I am never more sure of that fact than when I work on sermons with one of my friends.

First, a confession: As a pastor, I tend to allow myself to get busy or distracted all week long, and I often find myself on Friday morning in a coffee shop trying to mix up a sermon with less preparation and less organization than the task requires. It's like going to the refrigerator at 6:00pm and pulling out whatever ingredients I can find, then trying to put together a healthy meal from whatever is in there. Thanks to the Holy Spirit, this occasionally works, but the sermons are a bit slapdash, and this gives the congregation and the worship less respect and attention than it deserves. The sermons start sounding too similar to one another, they start to reflect my own biases and laziness WAY more than any sermon ever should.

This is why, as a preacher, I need community. I need accountability. I need this friend. Because she will force me to work harder, to wrestle, to really engage with the text not only from my perspective but through the eyes of the many diverse folks in the pews. She pushes, prods, and pokes holes in what seem like brilliant ideas. She challenges easy theologies. She shakes metaphors and illustrations to see if they can withstand the reality of people's lived experience. She will not let me get away with easy answers. She is the prophetic voice that calls me, and often our whole congregation, to account for our words and our actions. It's uncomfortable, it's difficult, but it is often what I need most.

If not for this friend, my sermons would often be finished a little earlier. But they would also be weaker. They would be straw-man sermons that could not hold up to the scrutiny of real people living in the real world.

All of us need these prophetic voices. We need someone who will tell us, with love, that we need to look again at who we are, what we say, and how we live. We need someone who has the courage to speak up and who cares about us enough to help us be better. Individuals, churches, communities, nations need these voices: they wake us from our lethargy and hypocrisy and call us to do better.

Today, even though my sermon is far from finished, I am thankful for a friend who cares enough about me, about this congregation, to challenge me. And I wish there were more people in the world with the courage and care to be prophetic.

Up in Smoke

It's gone. Those were the only words I could come up with when, on Tuesday, I discovered that my home church in Ohio had burned to the ground. All I could think of were the things that had been lost: the site of so many memories, the items that held so much tradition, the sacred space that had been almost my home for the first seventeen years of my life had disappeared in a matter of hours.

Anamnesis

I remember so many important moments in that church. The pews were the site of so many naps, so much coloring, so many childhood hours spent doing everything except paying attention. I went to Vacation Bible School in that church, eating snacks and playing games in the Fellowship Hall. I remember countless potlucks, Kiwanis Pancake Suppers, and Rotary Spaghetti Dinners, gathering around tables with community members of all ages. The classrooms were where I learned the Lord's Prayer, where I became acquainted with the books of the Bible, where I had Girl Scout meetings and MYF gatherings. I remember painting walls and pulling up carpets as training for mission trips. I played in the nursery for years, and can still picture the furniture and toys that had filled that room.

I used to go exploring through the church while my mom counted the offering. My sister and I discovered that, if you used the right pair of safety scissors, you could pick the lock and climb up to the bell tower. We figured out how to get into the organ pipe storage rooms, we crawled under pews and climbed secret back staircases. We uncovered the long-forgotten chair lift and we knew all of the best hiding places for Sardines.

But the Sanctuary... the Sanctuary was my favorite space. It always struck me as the place where God lived: a holy space, but a comfortable one, too. Over my 17 years there, I sat in just about every spot in that room, from the front-center pew as an acolyte to the back corner of the balcony as a youth. I remember going to children's time on the chancel steps and playing trumpet in the choir loft on Easter Sunday. The lectern there was the first place I ever read Scripture in public. I was baptized and confirmed in that Sanctuary, and I stood before the altar there to give the benediction just after I first announced that I was discerning a call to ministry. I learned to play the organ there, while bats flew laps around the ceiling above me.

For seventeen years, that church building was my second home. It was familiar enough to walk in the dark; I knew every inch of the space, every smell, every shadow was as well-known to me as my own reflection. When I moved away to go to school, and then to take my first job, the church was always one of my first stops on my return. I longed to get back into my home church, back among my church family.

Intercessions

I always assumed that I'd be able to go back. And it was always my church home. When I went to college, that seemed a temporary relocation, and I always came home to my church. My seminary days were the same. When I moved to take my first church appointment, I knew the churches I served would never be my home. As a pastor, I'm a member of an Annual Conference, not a congregation. But in my heart, I never left. That big sandstone building was my sacred space, and the people within it were my family.

That is, until Wednesday. On Wednesday, that sacred space disappeared. In a matter of hours, flames destroyed all of those familiar items, all of the rooms I once wandered, until all that was left was a sandstone shell. After the fire, the pictures showed what looked like a ruined medieval castle with stone walls crumbling around a pile of ash and unrecognizable detritus.

I was devastated. I have grieved as though for a beloved friend. For that church building was a friend, in a way. It was a place that saw me through struggles and joys, the constant that allowed me to change and grow within it. There have been tears, and there will certainly be more as the days and weeks go on. There is a loss, not only of the past, but of the future. I will now never be able to be married in that place. I now no longer have the option of presiding at that table in the stole of an ordained elder. And that is difficult for me to accept.

Doxology

But I am trying to give thanks, as well. I am trying to thank God for the gift that the building has been for me and for so many others in the congregation and the community.

I give thanks for those who, more than a century ago, gave funds and support for the building of a church. I give thanks for their vision, and for the way God worked through them to provide for generations to come.

I give thanks for a solid sandstone frame that withstood years of frigid winds, torrential storms, blizzards, and steamy summers, sheltering those within as they weathered physical, political, emotional, and spiritual storms.

I give thanks for old, stained carpets crossed by hundreds of feet as worshipers came forward to pray, to receive ashes, to be washed in baptismal waters, to be fed at the communion table, to light candles, and to sing God's praises.

I give thanks for carefully carved pews, worn smooth by countless hands and backsides, that supported worshipers of all ages and backgrounds. I also give thanks for pew cushions, added later, that made that support so much more comfortable.

I give thanks for dog-eared books, Bibles, and hymnals, from which generations of faithful, questioning, and doubting folks read words of theology, history, and praise.

I give thanks for paraments, altar cloths, and banners that displayed the liturgical year so that we could understand it.

I give thanks for stained glass windows with pictures of Bible stories and names of long-forgotten donors, windows that showed that the Light of Christ can be colorful and energizing.

I give thanks for the baptismal font, capped with a dove, which sat always in the chancel reminding us of the Holy Spirit's presence in our worship and, through baptism, in our lives.

I give thanks for the altar table, where so many holy feasts were blessed by Christ's presence and shared by God's people.

I give thanks for chipped dishes over which holy conversations were held and upon which delicious meals were served.

I give thanks for wrinkled choir robes and sheet music, from which songs of praise poured to praise and lift our souls to our Creator.

I give thanks for items now forgotten, and for a building that housed a century of activities both sacred and ordinary, people in all stages of saintliness and sinfulness, and moments of tradition and transformation. I give thanks for what the building that housed Ada First United Methodist Church was.

But I know that a church is not a building. I know that, even without that beautiful building to house their activities, the church will go on. They will heal. They will find hope. They will rebuild. They will thrive. They will grow. Through God's grace, they will continue to be the faithful, fruitful community I have known them to be. They will journey on with the guidance of the Spirit, and they will be in my prayers, as they always have been.

That's What I Said.

Matthew 16:15: "Jesus said to them, 'But who do you say that I am?'"

You are God in the flesh.

You are a human being who has experienced what I have experienced.

You are God seen face-to-face on earth.

You are a human being who laughed and cried and prayed with friends.

You are God who leaves fingerprints on our lives.

You are a human being who ate and drank and shared a table with strangers.

You are God who challenged the religious and political leaders.

You are a human being who embraced outcasts and sinners.

You are God who has existed through all time.

You are a human being who died a human death.

You are God who breathed life into creation.

You are a human being who rose from the dead.

You are God who reaches out with grace and mercy.

You are a human being who taught us to love and forgive.

You are God and human, the bridge between God's kingdom and fallen earth.

You are Creator and Savior.

You are Love Incarnate.

Amen.

Love Letter

He said to him, " 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment." - Matthew 22:37-38 NRSV

Dear God,

I love you. Not just for your gifts, though I marvel at the beauty and wonder of your creation and I am thankful. Not just for your word, though I enjoy poring over the Scriptures you have given.

No, I love you for who you are.

You are endlessly patient. I know because you put up with me. You call, and even when I'm not paying attention, even when I intentionally ignore you, you keep nudging my consciousness, trying to reach my heart with your grace.

You are just. While the world shouts, pointing fingers and calling names and pushing agendas, you quietly hold out even scales, measuring everything against your holy standard, and pouring out mercy when we would tip the scales to hatred.

You are compassionate. You hear the cries of the hungry and promise that in your kin-dom all will have enough. You see the oppressed and the downtrodden and promise that you will bring liberation. You feel the pain of the sick and the outcast and promise that someday you will draw all your children into your healing embrace.

You are love. Within yourself, you are perfect mutual love: unity and diversity, three and one, a divine dance. You are love that reaches beyond yourself; you surround and envelop every living thing, you make relationship possible. Even when we would put up barriers and try to keep your love only for ourselves, you reach over around and through our walls and touch all of your creation.

I love you. Please make me more like you. Awaken me to your call. Rouse me to work for your justice. Soften me to share your compassion. But most of all, teach me to love as you love. Fill me up with you, with love, that your Spirit would pour through me and splash joyfully through the lives of everyone I meet.

Amen.