The Church Laughs

This is my newsletter article for August.  Though it's not directly connected to the theme of change, it is a good reminder of who we are called to be as "church" and how God reminds us of that call.
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This summer I’ve really enjoyed journeying through the appointed lessons for each Sunday.  We’ve truly had some thought provoking texts that can be approached in a variety of ways.  A couple of weeks ago we had the familiar story of “The Good Samaritan”—and, as I shared with you during worship, I found it both incredibly frustrating and incredibly thought provoking for the same reason:  It says SO MUCH and changes whenever we, the reader, change how we enter the story.  If we see the events in the story from the eyes of the man in the ditch, the story says something differently than if we see the story from the eyes of, say, the innkeeper. 

This past Sunday we looked at the story of Father Abraham and Mother Sarah entertaining three strangers.  If you remember the story, Abraham is sitting in the shade of his tent and, in the distance, spots three people approaching.  Abraham rushes to meet the strangers, offers them simple hospitality and ends up laying before them an elaborate feast in an exercise of radical hospitality.  (Remember, too, that the word hospitality means “love of the stranger.”)  As the story continues to unfold, we hear again God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah, that they would indeed have a child, and we witness again Sarah’s infamous response:  She laughs. 

Sarah laughs. 

It had been so long since she had initially heard this promise from God and here she was, years later, being reminded of it.  She had lived with that promise, had bought into that promise, had held onto that promise for SO LONG…but things weren’t happening the way she had hoped they would or understood that they would and so, in the face of one more reminder, Sarah laughs. 

Whenever I think about Abraham and Sarah’s relationship, I can’t help but inject a little bit of my own experience into it.  I mean, can you imagine what it was like for Abraham to convince Sarah that God was speaking to him and that God had big plans for them?  Can you imagine what it was like for Sarah to listen to Abraham’s crazy talk, to leave everything she had known, and to journey to a new land all on a string of promises that somehow never seem to take shape?  (At least some of my crazy talk comes to fruition and Monica has the chance to see promises realized.)

This was Sarah’s reality: following Abraham, listening every day to Abraham reciting his “crazy talk” about promises of prosperity and promises of children and promises of a future and becoming a great nation.  And, of course, Sarah eventually finds herself believing these promises, living with these promises, waiting for these promises to become reality.  A child!  That’s all she wants!  That’s her purpose in the world in which she lived:  To provide heirs for her husband and children to remember who they were and where they had come from and all that was important to them.  But…it never seems to happen.

And so, as she sits inside the tent, doing the dishes after preparing this feast for these three strangers, she hears this promise again.  And she laughs.  And who can blame her?  It’s “ceased to be with her as the way of women.”  She’s passed childbearing years.  What had started as crazy talk and become a real promise had now become a cruel joke.  And she laughs. 

The church laughs. 

I think the church is in a similar position as Mother Sarah.  We have been offered this promise:  That through us, the world will change.  We’ve seen this promise reinforced:  Many of our congregations once thrived, our buildings were filled to capacity, we once occupied a place of prominence in the culture—not unlike some of the reinforcement that Mother Sarah experienced whenever they camped in a beautiful place, when they had a really good spring and multiplied their flocks and herds and their wealth.  But all of those factors that seemed to reinforce this promise of prosperity and success and a secure future dwindled, their power diminished, and the reality of age and the change that comes with that age settles in.  And the church looks back on these promises of God and..laughs. 

We have something that Mother Sarah didn’t have:  We have a story filled with examples of a God who keeps God’s promises—including Mother Sarah’s own story.  Sarah didn’t have that.  In fact, Mother Sarah was in on the “ground floor” of the creation of this story.  Despite having this record of promises kept, we still struggle to believe in God’s promises to us:  That God is with us and that, through us, the world will be changed.  We struggle to believe this because it doesn’t happen the way we think it should, according to the schedule we think God should follow.  And with each passing year we seem to lose more and more of that ability we feel we possess to make the changes that need to be made—not unlike Mother Sarah.  Our numbers shrink, our wealth dries up, our influence wanes. 

God continues to remind us of God’s promises.

What I find most fascinating about this story is that the promises of God are not restated or reinforced in a designated holy space or by appropriately credentialed individuals.  God’s promises are made clear through total strangers in a seemingly chance encounter when a faithful servant rushes to offer the strangers hospitality (love).  In moments of doubt and despair, God comes to us in unexpected ways, pushing back against our systematic understandings and our fears that what was promised will never be, and gently reminds us, with the voice of strangers, outsiders, people we don’t even know, that God is still with us and that God’s promises are sure. 

Yes, many of the things that we took as validation or success are slowly and steadily fading away.  Every time we lose a member, every time we gather for a Sunday School Christmas program, every time we meet for a WELCA meeting and see fewer and fewer faces we experience the same thing that Mother Sarah experienced:  Fear that God’s favor has shifted, that the promise will not become real, that our window of opportunity is closing. 

But I think that, in God’s wisdom, this story offers us a reminder of how to refresh the reality of this promise as we as to rediscover our purpose as the Body of Christ.  This whole story hinges on one act:  Father Abraham rushing out to meet total strangers and offering them hospitality.  In this act love and kindness, Father Abraham and Mother Sarah’s faith is, I think, restored.  Challenged, most definitely—particularly for Sarah.  But in serving these outsiders, these strangers (and serving them not scraps or leftovers or what can just be scraped together but rather with the BEST of all that God had given Abraham), Abraham and Sarah are again connected to the community of God and are offered again words of promise:  You have a future.

The church has a future.  The thing is, though, that it’s THE FUTURE and it will not look like the past.  To realize it, to get into it, to feel the promise again, I think, is going to take some of that radical hospitality that Abraham exercised, that the prophets call us to, that Jesus modeled for us, and that the epistles in the New Testament reinforce.  It’s in the acts of loving our neighbor—particularly the marginalized and the outsider—that God comes to us and says, “I’m with you and through you, I will change the world and make you great.”  

The Church is in the Ditch

The gospel lesson for this coming Sunday is the too familiar parable from Luke about the “Good Samaritan.”  I say “too familiar” because everyone knows this story and believes they know what it’s about:  It’s a call to be better people, to help those in distress, and not to be like the “religious folks” who say all the right things but can’t seem to get their actions to line up with their words.  That’s a great introductory explanation for six year olds, I suppose, but this is a complex parable with many different angles from which to approach it.  And, believe me, I’ve been journeying many of them this week and discovering still more paths into the heart of this quintessential Jesus story.

The news this week about the US House attempting to pass a Farm Bill without a food stamp program and other news and statistics about homelessness and taking care of our veterans has me fairly certain as to which direction I’ll move with my sermon this Sunday, so don’t worry that you’re going to read this blog entry and already know what I’m going to say on Sunday.[1]  How’s that for a sermon tease?

But this is what I was turning over in my mind on my way to the office this morning concerning this too familiar parable.  A key element to this story is a call to see who is around us.  The priest and the Levite fail to see the man laying in the ditch, for example, and because of this they fail to exercise what the law requires:  To love our neighbor as ourselves.  A colleague pointed out at text study this last week that many of the people who heard this parable as members of the original audience would have seen themselves as the man in the ditch—ignored, neglected, abused, broken, hurting.  The struggle for them would be to see the Samaritan, present and willing and able to help them from their ditch.  After all, how could someone from the outside, from the wrong side of the tracks, from among “those people” be able to help one of God’s “chosen people” from the ditch? 

Here’s how I imagine this scene playing out:

Samaritan:  Are you all right there?

Man:  Yeah.  I'm fine.  Don't worry about me.

Samaritan:  Are you sure?  I mean, you're, like, not wearing any clothes.  And I'm no doctor but I'm pretty sure your leg shouldn't be sticking out at that angle. 

Man:  Oh.  That?  That's nothing.  I'm okay.  Don't worry about me.  Just go about your business.

Samaritan:  Aren't you worried about bleeding to death, though?  I mean...that's a lot of blood on the ground there.

Man:  Yeah, I'm okay.  I'll just wait here for some help...I mean, for one of my buddies to...help. 

Samaritan:  I don't know about that.  The only people I've been seeing on the road today have been priests and Levites.  I think there must be a convention or something.

Man:  (mumbles) Yeah, I saw a couple, too.  Don’t let me keep you.  I’m sure you’re on your way to Bethel or something.

Samaritan:  You really don't look good.  I think I should take you someplace to get some help. 

Man:  No, no.  Don't worry about me.

Samaritan:  Look, I can’t just leave you here.

Man:  Nah.  I just need to catch my breath, get my bearings, get back up on my feet and-

Samaritan:  You do remember that your leg is broken, right?  Maybe you’ve lost too much blood...

Man:  Oh.  Yeah.

Samaritan:  (Gets down from his horse and gently lifts the still protesting man out of the ditch)  Come on.  Let's get you some help.

Man:  But, didn't you say you weren't a doctor?  Maybe I should wait for a doctor....

Samaritan:  I think you should wait for a doctor at this hotel down the road. 

Man:  A hotel?!

Samaritan:  Yeah.  At least you'd be clean and comfortable.  Well, at least more comfortable than laying in a ditch.  Get you some clothes and some food while you wait.

Man:  (Mumbles) The thieves took all my money...

Samaritan:  I'll pay for it.

Man:  But then I’ll owe you!  I can't owe someone like y...I mean, I shouldn't owe anyone.  It's not the way I like to roll.

Samaritan:  (Chuckles)  Don't worry about it.  I got it.

What if this parable, about opening one’s eyes to see God calling us into relationship with our neighbor, is also a parable about calling us to see God working through our neighbors to provide for our needs, to bind us up, support us, carry us, and bring us into a deeper relationship with God’s self and those around us?  What if this is a parable about seeing God’s mercy at work in our lives through people we normally wouldn’t think twice about?

I think that’s exactly what this parable is.  This is the upside down nature of the kingdom/reign of God:  God always works in unexpected ways.  We acknowledge this all the time—from Christmas to Easter to Pentecost every year.  Then why would we be surprised to know that God uses people who are different from us (maybe right down to whether or not they believe in God the way we believe in God...if they believe in God at all) to provide SOMETHING for the faithful?  God’s done it before, used “outsiders” to minister to, care for, and teach the “insiders.”  Why are we surprised?  And why do still refuse to see the Samaritans around ourselves?

Now, if I’m right about this (and I think I am), that God doesn’t just use faithful members of the church to minister to the church and her members but also uses anyone, anytime, anywhere, and that we have a habit of ignoring these unexpected vehicles of grace, check this out.

Many of our churches are laying in ditches.  Broken, abused, neglected—by hurting clergy, by hurting members themselves, and by an institutional system that is failing them[2]—they lay in the ditch waiting for “the right kind of person” to come and lift them out, to bind up their wounds, to anoint them with oil[3], and send them on their way.  The church lies there, watching, waiting, for the right pastor or expert to see them, connect with them, and solve all of their problems.  In the meantime, God sends Samaritan after Samaritan passed our churches and we ignore them, look passed them, waiting for that perfect savior that fits our expectations to lift us from the ditch and make us healthy again. 

This is parable is a complex parable.  It can speak so many things to so many people depending on where the hearer positions themselves in the story.  We’re used to being the Samaritan, striving to be the good neighbor, hearing that call to see the people around us who are need.[4]  That’s a good message and one the church (and our larger communities) needs to hear.  We do a horrible job meeting the needs of people in our communities, in our state, in our country, and in our world.  But I think if we position ourselves in the ditch, as I think we should, and realize that it is God who comes, as always, to lift us from our place of abandonment and brokenness, who binds us up and sends us out, we get a much fuller understanding of grace and love of neighbor.  The challenge, of course, is to change the way we expect God to show up.  God is not going to show up as your ideal pastor from 19?? to pack your pews, teach your hundreds of children, and visit each and every member weekly.  God is not going to send you the perfect entertainer that is going to make your members dig deeply into their pockets and drop obscene amounts of cash in your offering plates.  God is not going to send you the leader whose political and theological insights, morals and values, and social stances line up perfectly with your own.  Instead, God is going to send you “one of those people,” who you don’t know but whom you will hopefully take the time to get to know, who is not going to look the way you think he should look or talk the way you think she should talk.  But, given half the chance, I guarantee that this Samaritan leader, sent by God, will work as hard as they can to pull you from the ditch, bind up your wounds, and send you out so that YOU can be a Samaritan to someone else.  The question, of course, is:  Are you going to see them for who they are or are you going to lay in the ditch, waiting for the person you think should be your rescuer? 

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[1] Reading my blog posts is never an excuse to skip church (though you should probably be getting extra credit).  The primary reason we gather in community is not for ourselves—to hear a sermon that connects with us and makes us better people.  The primary reason we gather in community for worship is for the health and sake of the community.  It’s not about what you take away; it’s about what you bring to the community.

[2] Please note that I didn’t include “the world” in this list of hurting people who have abused and neglected the church.  That smacks too much of Christian persecution and, no matter what televangelists and popular writers might say, we do NOT experience Christian persecution in this country.  That right there should tell you how sick the theology of these people is, if they are fantasizing about being persecuted en masse like that.

[3] And to pick up the tab.  Let’s face it, the Dollar Bill is a powerful god in the pantheon of western culture and its influence is just as strong in the church as out of it. 

[4] And why wouldn’t we want to be the Samaritan?  Coming to the rescue, solving all of the problems.  It’s what we do as sinful people.  Theology of glory, folks.  Theology of glory. 

Unexpected Change

Something interesting happened to me this last weekend.  Change came in an unexpected place.

I received a call last week from Camp Courage North, in Lake George, MN.  This is the summer camp that Monica and I worked at for six summers, where we met and where we were married.  For me it’s one of the holiest places on earth.  It was a very powerful and formative time of my life—and the lives of others who are a part of the Courage North Family.  But that was twenty years ago, give and take a few years…but I’m jumping ahead of myself.

Anyway, I received a call last week looking for help.  The old kitchen staff had all retired or had moved on and there was an entirely new kitchen staff.  They were having problems with things like timing and intuition.  Cooking at a summer camp is unlike cooking anyplace else but once you’ve mastered cooking at summer camp you definitely can cook anywhere, anytime.  Since I started my time at Courage North in the kitchen and ended my time in the kitchen, and since I live nearby, they asked if I could come and lend a hand.  “No problem,” I said.  And so I took my days off and spent them back in the kitchen at Courage North.

When you hold people and places firmly in your memory, they become static, unchanging.  But everything changes.  Even Courage North, fixed so tightly in the memories of so many people, changes.  This became apparent right away.

Sunday night, I’m working on preparing dinner for the first night of a new session.  New kids had just arrived that afternoon and there’s always a hum of excitement on “intake day.”  The kitchen at Courage North is a typical camp/lunch room kitchen.  You stand in the kitchen and look out serving windows and see the entire dining hall.  It’s fun to stop and watch and listen as kids experience the joy of not just camp but a very special camp.  Every session at Courage North is designed to take kids who usually fall on the margins or in the “outside the norm” category and give them a place and a time to be completely normal.  Everyone, all the same.  Physically handicapped adults, deaf children and teens, hemophiliacs, kids who have suffered serious burns, and kids who fall on the Austism spectrum.  You can see how important a place this can be for kids who are pushed aside, stared at, mimicked and mocked.  So I always found myself stopping and watching and giving thanks that such a place exists and that I’ve been allowed to be a part of it. 

And so I did again this past Sunday night.  I would pause, look out, listen.  The interesting thing is:  The more I did this, the less “in the moment” I became.  I found myself being drawn to the difference between what was happening now and what had happened in the past, noticing what was “missing” from what I observed more than what was happening now.  I had already come to terms with the physical differences I had observed with camp:  the buildings were no long as new (after all, 20 years had passed since I had been in them), equipment had changed, things had been moved and updated, and so on.  But…where were the Deaf staff?  Courage North had always been privileged to have a large population of Deaf staff; it’s how I learned to be cross-culturally aware.  Where were the familiar faces?  Courage North had been family.  Sure, staff would cycle through, but it seemed like there were always stable and consistent faces who found themselves drawn back to this place every year.  And, what’s more, campers felt the tug, too, and would rise to the ranks of staff when they would become too old to participate in the camping programs.  Typically, of forty some staff, one would easily know at least half.  Now there were four familiar faces in the forty. 

Change had come to a place that I had always held as unchanging.  It left me unsettled in a way that I rarely experience.  I am a fierce advocate of change, speaking candidly about its nature and encouragingly to people who struggle through it.  Change is a reality of life; things end all the time.  They have to end for new things to be created.  But for so long I had treasured my memories of Courage North, out of the loop of the changes sweeping the camping industry and, in particular, the Courage camps—I have held so firmly to my memories of what had been that Courage North had, for me, become a place that existed outside of the world.  Now, however, I stood at the serving counter of the kitchen at the heart of one of the holiest places on earth and had realized that change had come to a place I had thought would not and should not change.

Having realized how unsettled I was about these changes and realizing how hypocritical this reaction was, I began trying to figure out how and why I could be so upset about change.  I was reacting about change at Courage North the way I see people reacting about change in the church all the time.  Where are the familiar faces?  Where are the familiar surroundings?  How could change happen to a place whose existence seems to set it above the tides of change that sweep the rest of the world?  Now, having realized how I was reacting, I was all the more troubled.  How can I encourage people to be open minded about change and to consider what may be birthed because of this change when I myself was agitated about change coming too close to my sanctuary against time?

I began following my own advice.  “Fine.  Change has come and will continue to come.  You can’t do anything about it.  Things have ended.  Now…where are signs of new life?”  Such a dangerous question to ask because, once you set aside your struggle for control and realize you can’t dictate when, how and where change will happen and you start looking for those signs of resurrection and rebirth, you become overwhelmed with hopeful assurances. 

Fresh, young, passionate, inspired and inspiring leadership is present.  At Courage North, it’s not Tom and Mimi anymore.  It’s Justin and Emily, Colleen and Charlotte.  In the church, it’s not Pastor So-and-So from fifty years ago.  It’s now pastors who are much more aware of God’s call to the church to not be a destination or a ritual but to be a part of God’s loving interaction with a broken world.  New leaders for a new world facing new realities, equipped in a particular way to meet those challenges head on and to see possibilities where others see memories. 

Exciting, new approaches to programs that create hope and life in more and more people.  At Courage North, it’s not just Deaf kids, hemophiliacs, burned kids and physically handicapped adults anymore.  Kids with autism, kids with ADHD, kids with all kinds of communication challenges are now a part of the Courage North family.  In the church, it’s not just “our” WELCA, youth group, men’s group, Sunday School, and so on.  Through collaboration and “outside the box” thinking, more people are brought into community in new and exciting ways, changing more lives. 

An opportunity to examine traditions and why we do things and how we could do things differently.  At Courage North, it’s having conversations about how meals are prepared and served and how the buildings can be used not just for a handful of summer programs but for more gatherings throughout the entire year.  In the church, it’s having a conversation about how things are done (VBS, Sunday School, committees, fundraisers, etc.) and how our buildings can be used more than a handful of hours a week but, instead, be opened to more people for more purposes throughout the entire week.  The conversation has turned to how we can make the most use out of the facilities that we have to make the most difference and provide the most service to the communities we serve. 

Investing for the future.  At Courage North, it’s examining and prioritizing what needs to be updated and modernized, considering facilities and having those challenging/exciting conversations about replacing and expanding, realizing that the changes that we make will upset those, who like me, have been clinging to our memories but will serve people of today better in the future.  In the church, it’s the exact same conversation:  We consider how facilities (our buildings) and their furnishings need to be repaired and replaced (including the buildings themselves) so that we can better meet the needs of people today instead of confining ourselves to the parameters established by the memories of those few people who are still with us from forty years ago. 

Through it all, there’s an acknowledgment of the nature of the organization:  It’s alive and, as is the case with all living things, it changes and grows.  I am amazed at how, at Courage North, there’s a deep-rooted, collective second (or third or fifth or twelfth) wind sweeping the organization.  It’s like the organization is alive, gearing up to break out in a celebratory dance of life.  In the church, when we step away from our fears and anxieties and our determination to stand against change, we are caught in the wind of the Holy Spirit, filling us and inspiring us and propelling us into the future.  The church is alive, the Body of Christ, reaching out to embrace the world. 

Monday night Monica and I were talking.  She, too, was struggling a bit with all the changes.  By then I was coming to a pretty good place.  I was accepting the fact that change had come to a place that I thought would never change and that it was all right—we would survive this change.[1]  I made the comment that it’s a new generation.  And it is.  And it’s exciting. 

Twenty years ago I felt blessed to be a part of something so incredibly special in a place that was restorative and inspiring, to be around people who formed and shaped me and helped to create me the person I am today.  Now I feel doubly blessed—not just for all of these reasons but for being here, at this moment of time, to witness and participate, to be a part of the conversation, and to discern the future.  It’s the same for me and my life in the church:  I feel blessed to have been inspired, shaped and created by incredible people in special places all my life and now I’m doubly blessed as I discern with congregations and individuals all the hope-filled possibilities God has placed before the church, expanding our influence and touching more lives. 

                                                                                                                         

Today, almost a week later, I’m okay with the changes that have come to Courage North.  I miss people.  I miss my life there. I miss the comfort of familiar faces and routines.  And that’s okay.  But, man, I’m excited to see what comes next.  It’s going to be awesome!

 

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[1] I want to briefly explain this comment.  By “we,” I’m not referring to just Monica and myself or even everyone connected to Courage North.  And by survive I’m not questioning whether or not Courage North will continue to be viable.  By “we would survive this change” I’m actually referring to those of us who struggle with the reality of change when we cling so fiercely to memories and traditions and refuse to acknowledge that change WILL come.  Often times, to these people, change feels like death.  “We are no longer what we used to be.  We are less.  We are diminished.  We are losing our life.”  That depends on how you look at it.  For me,  last Sunday at Courage North, this was definitely what was going through my mind as I observed the goings on at Courage North.  By Monday, however, I realized that we are not dying—we are thriving.  Courage North has graduated to a new level of existence in which it is not so bound by the past and constricted by a narrow vision but embraces more people, touching more lives and bridging them to this incredible place and all that it has to offer.  The church has a lot to learn from Courage North.  Maybe we should send the church to camp?