Search This Blog

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Creeds: And, Jesus…



The Apostles Creed:

“And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord,”

The Nicene Creed:

“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.”

There is no Christianity without him.  The creeds will go on to speak of the things Jesus did, but the introduction to Jesus is quite beautifully stated (simply in the Apostles Creed, and more descriptively in the Nicene Creed) as a reminder to us that we believe in Jesus, first because of who Jesus is.

I cannot help but think of John 1:1-5, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (NIV).

Jesus is the Word.  As much as I love Scripture, it is only the written communication we have from God.  Jesus is God incarnate, the living, breathing Word, sent to us… to show us what it is to be human, to be loved, to be birthed, and also to be surrendered to creator, as Lord.

Lord is an interesting word, an interesting concept.  To be lord (lowercase l) is to have legitimate power based in heredity or preeminence.  To be Lord (capital L) can only be defined as to be God or Jesus.  It’s intriguing how this echoes, “I am.”  Surely, the Lordship of Jesus carries with it the authority of every other lord, yet there is something different here, however subtle it may be.  Rather than command unquestioning obedience, this Lord brings light and life and then persuades us to follow by the power of prevenient grace.

L.

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

For the Suffering...



Luke 17:1-4, “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come.  It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.  So watch yourselves. If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them.  Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”[i]  The word of the Lord.

This is a hard teaching for people who have been oppressed, abused, and sinned against, but I’m not sure it is as hard as we have made it out to be.  Unfortunately, in our zeal to preach forgiveness for the sinner, we have often missed the very real and pressing suffering of the sinned against.  Even with such a short passage, we focus in on the very last verse, never accounting for the strong language that Jesus uses in support of those who have been harmed.  As someone who has endured abuse, myself, I believe I have a voice that can speak into this blind spot in our teaching about forgiveness and healing, but it begins with redefining terms and accepting the brokenness of human experience.  

At the expense of sounding arrogant, forgiveness has never been all that hard for me, at least as I define it.  I think this might be because I always believe people can change and be better.  Honestly, that's sort of weird, since I am decidedly not an optimist.  Now, forgetting?  That’s another thing altogether, but we should take great care in remembering that the notion of ‘forgive and forget’ is not actually found in Scripture…  Huge sigh of relief for detail oriented people who remember everything…

We need to make a distinction between forgiveness and healing related to pain, suffering, mourning, or grief.  Too often, I feel that we approach wounded people by insisting that they forgive those who have harmed them.  That is biblical after all, right?  But we also project unreal expectations on forgiveness.  In so doing, we perpetuate cycles of abuse.
Let me tell you what forgiveness is not:

  • Forgiveness is not forgetting the offense and moving on without taking the necessary time to heal.  No one can determine the length of time that another person needs to grieve the loss that comes from being violated.  Grief is not something that is only associated with death, and we have to move away from the misconception that it is.  Although there are some predictable patterns of grief, it does not look the same for everyone, and we cannot put limits on the number of days that are appropriate to suffer from denial, anger, bargaining, or depression.  Even in acceptance, there is no need to embrace the act of abuse but to acknowledge that suffering occurred, and that it was terrible.  The victim gets to determine the timeline for the healing process.  Of course, people who genuinely love the hurting person should come alongside him or her and offer support as directed by the one who has been harmed.  Empathy is a beautiful gift, but none of us should conflate our own narratives with that of the one who is currently hurting most, and we absolutely must not ask a victim to care for our emotional needs in the midst of his or her pain.  One of the best articles I have ever read regarding this phenomenon was written by Susan Silk and Barry Goldman, entitled, “How not to Say the Wrong Thing.” Their principle of “comfort in, dump out,”[ii] is exceptional.  The general idea is that the people closest to tragedy and pain are allowed to hurt however they need to.  They are allowed to express themselves however they deem necessary, and anyone in a larger ‘ring,’ further removed from the suffering, may only offer comfort.  If those people also feel a need for comfort, themselves, they must seek it from someone even farther removed from the pain.   
  • Forgiveness is not indiscriminately returning to how the relationship was before the offense.  This is incredibly difficult to flesh out, because as followers of Jesus, we also frequently cite passages of Scripture about losing our lives and participating in the death of Christ, which may include being persecuted in some way, but please hear me clearly… none of this means that you have to participate in unhealthy relationships that violate who you are as a human being, created Imago Dei.  You do not have to allow yourself to continue to be abused in any way.  In the passage we began with, Jesus is clear that abusive actions are not justifiable.  Abuse and oppression cause harm, and nowhere… in any of this… do I see forgiveness defined as offering yourself to someone who will hurt you over and over again, without boundaries or consequence.  Nowhere.  We have to stop telling people that forgiveness means sucking it up, putting yourself in danger, and moving on, because it doesn’t!
  • Forgiveness is not blaming yourself, as opposed to the offender, for what happened.  There are some very important lessons to be learned about the difference between being culpable for terrible things that happen and taking responsibility, even when we are not directly culpable, but these burdens should never fall on the victims of oppression or abuse.  If we’re going to talk about taking responsibility for things that are not our direct fault; we must encourage people who are healthy and whole, in a good place where they are able to bear the suffering forced upon others either by individuals, corporate communities, or systemic systems, to work toward solutions.  This is never an opening to blame victims for the abuse that has occurred.  We should all be living by basic standards that do not allow the personhood of another to be violated in any way.  If such a violation occurs, it must never be labeled as the fault of the victim, regardless of circumstance, because offenders take advantage of anyone they can.  They will look for weaknesses to exploit, and they will create them if they do not exist.  Any story can be twisted to make it look as if even the most innocent victim was at fault, but ‘innocent’ is the key word here.  Abuse and oppression are not acceptable in any situation and cannot responsibly be explained away.

So what do we do about this?  Things are bad, but can they get better?

As the church, we have done a miserable job of helping victims to work through their pain, blanketly stating that forgiveness will restore all things.  Maybe we can roll with this from an eschatological viewpoint, but let’s be real, friends… most hurting people are more concerned with how they might survive the next few minutes than the end of the world as we know it!  We have to stop making these things congruent, because they’re just not…

I’ve made a decent case for several ‘just nots,’ including how we should not define forgiveness, but we must always be careful to reconstruct after tearing a concept apart.  So what is forgiveness?  As I set out to answer this question, I found that even Webster struggled…

Webster’s definition of forgiveness is “the act of forgiving” (ahem… super helpful).[iii]

Webster’s definition of forgiving is “willing or able to forgive” (there’s something to work with there).[iv]  I would argue that the capacity to forgive comes, at least in part, from care and healing.  To ask someone to forgive when he or she is still in the depths of sorrow and concerned about meeting the basic requirements of survival from moment to moment, is cruel.

Webster’s definition of forgive is “to give up resentment of or claim to requital.”[v]

If I were to define forgiveness, I would say it is the moment at which you reach a point where you no longer hope the one who has harmed you will be run over by a truck or struck down by lightning… or actually have a millstone hung around his or her neck and be thrown into the sea.  Admittedly, even this can be a process, depending on the offense.  And that’s OK.  Jesus said it!  The biblical definition from the Scripture we read also allows for rebuke and requires the offender to be repentant.  When translated, the original Greek from this passage speaks of the offender having a change of mind or purpose, and forgiveness is referred to as a sending away or leaving alone.  How often do we talk about that?  We don’t?  Well, we should, starting now.

Of course, Jesus gives us an example of forgiveness that neither demands nor receives such repentance when, as he is dying, he says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”[vi]  So, I’m not necessarily saying we must hold out for an apology, and, in fact, I have certainly offered forgiveness to others, myself, who have hurt me deeply and never bothered to care.  But… we have to stop shaming victims into this kind of obligation, because even if it is freeing to stop praying for that thunderstorm to hit; there is so much more work to be done than this.  Forgiving someone who does not deserve it is not a magical band-aid that removes all pain… And it certainly doesn’t remove scars.

What I’m trying to say is that we should stop lying… and we should also stop discrediting and humiliating victims.  Forgiveness is important, but it comes with guidelines and often with really long timeframes.  Perhaps we could stand in the gap while our brothers and sisters are allowed the space they need for legitimate healing to occur.


[i] Luke 17:1-4 (NIV).
[ii] Susan Silk and Barry Goldman. How not to Say the Wrong Thing. Dallas News, April 2013. https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2013/04/12/susan-silk-and-barry-goldman-how-not-to-say-the-wrong-thing
[iii] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forgiveness
[iv] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forgiving
[v] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forgive
[vi] Luke 23:34

Monday, October 16, 2017

Temporary Homes


“When you enter a town or village, don’t insist on staying in a luxury inn. Get a modest place with some modest people, and be content there until you leave” (Matthew 10:11, TM).

Well… ouch…

I’m not complaining, but…

There’s a saying that goes something like this:  If you say something that sounds derogatory and then say, “But;” your first statement is probably a lie.

After cramming seven people into a one bedroom apartment (first part time for a year and then full time for a couple of months), you would think any home with more than 1,000 square feet would have felt like a palace.  And this one did… for about two days…

When the spiders and flies came out, I suddenly remembered every house has its flaws.

When the dryer could not be connected for over a month, and I had to take my laundry to my mother-in-law’s basement (at age 38); and then the Internet wouldn’t work at all; and then the DirectTV guy had to spend so many hours at our house he asked if he could just move in; and then when the Internet guy finally did come, and we realized “high speed” is something that just doesn’t happen here… I started to complain.

I actually thought to myself, “I’m not complaining, but…” and then I just got honest.  I’m complaining.

Why?

I like this community.  I love these people.  I spent a good number of my childhood years growing up in ‘the country’ and have often wished my children could have this experience.  My job is great.  Somehow, I’m still managing to connect with people in the wider world of theological conversation.  My kids are awesome.  We actually have way more stuff than we need.  We’re not hungry… ever.  And we even recently found an excellent sale on memory foam tennis shoes and fuzzy winter flip flops.  What the heck is wrong with me?

I think it might be human nature to lack contentment, and even though we are human; it might be better to let this one go.

So, how does this relate to Ministry Monday?

Well, the truth is that ministry is most often a moving vocation.  A few people manage to stay somewhere for 20-30 years, but the vast majority of us have moved more times than we ever could have imagined.  And the imagination is a powerful thing.  I’m complaining, because life didn’t turn out the way I thought it might… the way I hoped it might...  So even though life is pretty good, right now, I continue to mourn the life I’d envisioned.  Is there space for that?  I think there has to be.

I spent decades looking for stability, and the irony is that finally embracing the temporary nature of my circumstances and existence is what brought about some sense of peace.

Is this going to last forever?  Nope.  It might get better.  And, let’s face it, it might get worse.  But I have learned that I can count on the fact that a year from now I will not be where I think I’ll be, and I will not be doing what I think I’ll be doing.  If I think about it for too long, I’ll get frustrated all over again, but I have to admit there is something comforting in knowing that anything I could possibly plan will not go the way I envision it.  It takes some of the pressure off.

I don’t know if that qualifies as contentment, but it’s a start…

L.

Monday, October 9, 2017

Oh, Dear God, Please Don’t Call My Kids to Ministry



I’m glad I’ve been called to ministry.  I cannot imagine doing anything else with my life.  But I would be lying if I said it wasn’t hard.  That’s the understatement of forever, and try to take that in the context of an author who loves hyperbole.  By hard; I mean heartrending, life changing, breaking me down to the core and beyond at times, blood, sweat, and too many tears, scar inducing hard.

And so, for this reason, I admit that I have sometimes prayed, “Oh, Dear God, please don’t call my kids to this.” 

I thought we were doing OK…

I have kids who want to be video game programmers, composers, and architects.  I have one who wants to be a theological paleontologist and discover the backstory of the creation of the world.  I don’t really know if that’s a thing, but it sounds pretty safe, right?  And then I have a seven year old who declared pretty early on that she was going to be an OBGYN, which I thought was a lofty (if somewhat specific) goal for second grade… until she approached me one afternoon and proclaimed that she needed to preach.

Well, crap.

Like any good pastor mom who wishes her kid would choose something less risky, like logging, fishing, flying airplanes, collecting garbage, or construction (try to find the humor… these are the five deadliest jobs in the United States); I put her off.  But she was relentless.  Finally, I told her that she could preach if she prepared a manuscript.  I mean, what seven year old is going to put in that kind of work?  The answer is mine.  I came home from the office the next day and found her with a stack of papers that included not only her sermon but an entire order of worship (call to worship, music, children’s moment with ‘Pastor M,’ (that’s what I get for using only one initial), Scripture, and prayer.

We listened to Pastor M2 (that’s what I decided to call her) as she preached, last night.  Her siblings laughed too much.  I made them sit up front for the 'children’s moment.'  I don’t care that they’re teenagers.  Of course, I joined her, kneeling on the floor, for prayer.  She was missing one of her papers, so she rustled through them with a confused look on her face before throwing her hands up in the air (I turned to my husband and said, "Oh my gosh... she's just like me").  When we sang “Jesus Loves Me,” as the closing hymn; she marched her little self right out the door and waited to shake each of our hands and thank us for coming to church.  There were fist bumps, as well.

The other day, she said, “Church people are nicer than other people.” 

Those stinking teenager siblings all choked to death, and I shot them a look that justified the dying.  It seems that her church experience has been different than theirs, thus far.  But I was still holding out hope that this is a phase…  Mommy’s a pastor, I love Mommy, I should be a pastor, too…  It’s the kind of thing that could fade with time and age.

I was hopeful that she got the “I need to preach” bug out of her system. 

She greeted me, this morning, with, “I think the next time I preach will be on Christmas, but I’m not sure what to do for the call to worship…” 

I gave her a hymnal, as I walked out the door…

L.