I recently visited India to speak at a conference called “Future to the Responsibility”.
When I landed in Mumbai, a driver called Arun was fortunately waiting for me at the airport, armed with an umbrella for the rains which really taught me what a Monsoon is!
We had quite a long drive to the hotel and although I know it’s a cliché for journalists to quote drivers during their blink-and-you’ll-miss-them visits to cities around the world, Arun and I exchanged quite a few gems.

I’d told him I’d arrived from the U.S. but that I was Egyptian. He still chose America as my country – e.g. how much do drivers make in “my country”, does “my country” have roads like the highway which starts shortly after Bombay International airport, etc.

“That’s an Indian church,” Arun said. “Do you have churches in your country?”

“Yes,” I replied.

Then a few minutes later, we passed a temple to Ganesha, the Hindu god of wealth and wisdom – a rare combination at the best of times!

“Do you know Ganesha?” Arun asked.

“Yes. He’s an Indian god, right?”

“Yes!” Arun said. “What is the American god called?”

Good question!

I was too exhausted for irony so I gave it to him straight – there are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Seikhs and Buddhists in America, all worshiping their own god. And then I told him I was a Muslim and asked him how relations were between Hindus and Muslims.

“Like brother and brother,” he said. “How are relations in your country?”

“Sometimes like brother and brother,” I replied. “Sometimes difficult.”

“Yes!” Arun said. “The same here.”

During my stay in India I got to see both “brother and brother” and “sometimes difficult”.

As a Muslim, I wanted to visit shrines to Muslim saints that I was told draw both Muslims and Hindus. So I went to Haji Ali in Mumbai, a shrine of a Muslim holy man who was believed to have died on his way to Haj (pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest site Mecca in what is today Saudi Arabia) and whose body is said to have been carried back home by the waters of the Arabian Sea.

Along the way to Haji Ali’s shrine were stalls where garlands were prepared to be given as tokens to the holy man, reminiscent of the offerings made at Hindu temples. And once inside the shrine – at the “ladies section” – I saw Muslim women wearing hijab and others reciting from the Quran alongside Hindu women with bindis on their forehead, all standing inside the mausoleum, saying prayers and awaiting blessing.

As the women exited Haji Ali’s shrine, the Hindus among them would bend to touch the doorstep of the ladies section in a move reminiscent of touching the feet of elders or parents as a sign of reverence by Hindus.

And so I was eager to see that cross-religious spirituality at Ajmer, home of one of India’s most important Muslim pilgrimage sites – the shrine of Khwaja Muin-ud-din Chishti, a Sufi saint and founder of the Chishti order, the main Sufi order in India to this day.

In case I was under any illusion that Muslims and Hindus were always like “brother and brother” my visit to Ajmer was cancelled exactly because brotherly love at times eludes Hindus and Muslims in India. Inter-communal riots and bombings in 1992/3 killed hundreds and left Hindus and Muslims still suspicious of each other.

Just as I was about to head to Ajmer, the driver taking me found out that because of a nationwide strike called by a Hindu nationalist party, tensions between Hindus and Muslims in Ajmer were high and that he wouldn’t be able to take me into the town nor would any other Hindu driver.

Instead of Ajmer, I visited Amber Fort, which was the ancient capital of Jaipur. Work on the fort – very representative of the architecture in Rajasthan State – began in 1592. The artwork in some parts of the palace was a mix of Hindu and Muslim art. For example, the screen from behind which the queens could look out onto the public area of the palace was made of panels which were alternately comprised of lotus flowers - representative of Hindu art - and stars - symbolizing Muslims art.

It was a beautiful expression of responsibility to the future that we can still learn from.

The Season of Passion has always been the most significant rhythm of the year for me as a spiritual pilgrim. One of my earliest memories of the church is sitting in the three hour Good Friday service – my Dad preaching one of the “seven last words” – and my mother singing, in her rich pain filled voice, “he was despised and rejected – a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. (I found out years later that my mother felt despised at the core of her being, deeply acquainted with the grief of having been beaten and bruised by her father when she was a little girl). What I remember about those three hour marathons was how I felt. For me, sitting in those dark pews in dark sanctuaries with dark music and dark words was very comforting. Somehow I felt safe – sure that the love of God in the story of a sad and suffering Jesus was enough to protect me, no matter what. And, that nothing could ever separate me from the dependable arms of a dependable God..

And yet, as I’ve grown in the Christian faith, I have found myself very uncomfortable with the traditional theory of atonement. The idea that Jesus suffered FOR me simply doesn’t match that childhood experience of Jesus suffering/living/ fearing WITH me. And so, a theory of substitutionary atonement simply doesn’t work for me. In addition, as a decades old feminist, I am all too aware of how “suffering for others” has become the expected Christian script for women in a way it has never defined men.

And yet, I am also beginning to realize that when we turn Jesus into a fellow sufferer, instead of a mighty savior, we can also fall into a diminishment of God that leaves our faith strangled by human finitude.

Recently, as I march resolutely toward the age of 60, I am all too aware of my human finitude. My back gave out in November – and I had to actually cancel out on a pastor’s trip to Nicaragua – a humiliating realization that I am not in charge, and that my leadership is expendable. And my now daily routines of stretching and sitting a certain way and anticipating twinges of pain have permanently destroyed the illusion that I am still a “young woman.” Combine that with a daily glimpse of wrinkles and brown spots - and the horrifying experience of trying to find a mother-of the-bride dress that doesn’t scream “matronly” – well, I now know in a new and visceral way that I am not omnipotent and eternal. So, thank God, God is!

And so, I am even more grateful for the story – for the reality – of the cross, Yes, as the arms of the cross continue to hold me tight, I know that God is WITH me in every moment of sorrow and suffering, pain and disappointment, anger and doubt – and in every moment of sin and brokenness and violence and greed in this badly bruised world. God does not do FOR us what we must and can do as the image of God in the world. God does not rescue us from the darkness of living, but holds and pushes and prods and challenges and saves and loves in the midst of it all.

BUT, as a seasoned servant of life, I also know that there is a kind of darkness and brutality and tragedy and horror that I simply can’t endure as a finite human being – and it is at those moments, that God suffers FOR me and FOR you and FOR the world which God loves.

AT-ONE-MENT with God. Sometimes it’s up to you and sometimes its up to me. Sometimes it’s up to God and us together. And sometimes it’s only up to God. AT-ONE-MENT is a dance – and it is a dance that celebrates the complexity and confusions of life. And it is a dance where the human and divine partners share the privilege of taking the lead – as the music and patterns continue to unfold.

May it be so!

It used to be conventional wisdom to avoid religion and politics at gatherings of friends and family. Nowadays, it’s nearly impossible not to talk about them. I think that’s a good thing; after all, for people of faith their religious convictions, if they mean anything at all, certainly inform their political opinions. It’s true for all traditions. When Benazir Bhutto was murdered, I offered condolences to my close neighbor, who a Muslim from Pakistan, and then we spoke about the religious politics of his former country.

For Jews and Christians listening week after week to the teachings of Torah, the Prophets and the New Testament, it is impossible not to have an convictions about the pressing social problems of our time. For instance, I believe caring for God’s people who are hungry, poor, without homes; destitute, sick, in prison and even unborn is a Biblical calling. It is not optional. Neither is it optional to be a good steward of one’s resources while caring for the resources of the earth in a manner that preserves it for future generations. Patterns of consumption that leads to eradication of species and threaten death to the creation, is an offense to God according to the scriptures of both Jews and Christians. Repentance is basic.

How can I teach and preach without these scriptures having some influence on my own political decisions about social policies that will more closely adhere to my religious convictions? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.

The current political discussions are focused on the very matters that our scriptures address: care for creation, hospitality to sojourners in the land, fair and equitable economic policy, health care for the sick, lifting up the poor, restraining greed, ending war while preserving peace, protecting the innocent and sustaining human freedom. These subjects are not unfamiliar to people of faith who read the Bible. I don’t expect people to agree on the precise way to address these problems, but I do believe it’s important for Christians to be fully engaged in the process by offering a vision rooted in scripture that corresponds to the hope offered there for all God’s people.

Speaking of people not agreeing, my guess is that not everyone in our congregations agree on every matter of politics, theology or church practices any more than we agree on books, movies or restaurants. People in our congregations, like our larger Church bodies have differences of opinions. That is no surprise and I don’t expect anything else. The real challenge for congregations is the same for our denominations, and our country. Treating one another with respect while disagreeing is the great challenge. At heart, it is a spiritual opportunity to learn how to care truly for another with respect while disagreeing on matters of real substance. The challenge is the same as that facing the country: living respectfully with different people and different opinions. People of faith have a narrative that calls us to such a life. Whether the country does right now is up for serious debate.

Writing “Thank you” notes was never a personal strength of mine.  It really wasn’t until I got married that I ever really wrote one.  Suddenly, my wife Meg deposited into my lap a ten page spreadsheet of all the people we needed to thank for our wedding.  Notes to the wedding guests were easy enough: Thank you for the frying pan, thank you for the salt shaker, thank you for the salad bowl.  Those were the easy ones. 

Then came the close family; then came the dear friends.  Suddenly, these thank you notes were simply overwhelming.  I’d come to one of my groomsmen on the list and I’d remember how he hugged me tight before the ceremony.  I’d come to my parents and remember how my father stood next to me, teary with joy throughout the ceremony.  I’d come to my ‘new’ uncle George and remember how he stood behind me during the family photo and afterward threw his arms around me from behind and bellowed “WELL, YOU”RE ONE OF US NOW!”

These were the moments that overwhelmed me with thankfulness.  So how do you say ‘thank you’ for that?

Luke tells us about some other people who were overwhelmed by a great gift.  In chapter 17, Luke tells us about ten men with leprosy who cried out to Jesus for mercy.  Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the Priests, and along the way they were healed.  One of the men returned to Jesus to give thanks to God for this great gift, nine of them did not. 

Martin Bell writes in his book The Way of the Wolf: “Ten were cleansed and only one returned.  It must be nice to be able to do that.”  I think he’s right…sometimes finding the right words or the right way to say ‘thank you’ is the most difficult thing to do…especially when the gift is so overwhelming. 

And yet the one does return.  The one does give thanks to God for this miraculous healing.  So my question is not, like Jesus, ‘Where are the other nine?,’ but rather ‘Why did the one return?’  Where did he find the courage and the strength to be thankful in the face of such an overwhelming gift? 

As always, the Biblical text is sparse on details.  It rarely gives us a peek into the inner thoughts and feelings of its many characters, and this one healed leper is no exception.  If I may speculate a bit, though, I like to think that this man never lost sight of the gifts of God.  I like to think that he always had his eyes trained to see the gifts of God.  After all, the text says “One of them, when he SAW that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.” 

I believe that this one man who returns, who gives thanks to God for his healing, this man demonstrates one thing – Thanksgiving is a choice.  It’s not always an easy choice, it’s not always easy to find the right words to say ‘thank you,’ but this man does prove that we always have the choice to return and give thanks. 

And when we know the gifts of God, when we are thankful for the gifts of God perhaps words are not the best way to give thanks.  I like how Jesus says to the man ‘Get up and go on your way, your faith has made you well.’

It’s as if Jesus were saying to the man, the fact that your are grateful is enough.  The fact that you are able to live your thanksgiving demonstrates your faith, and that faith gives you a health beyond the simple healing of body that you received from God. 

The ability to live your gratefulness in the sight of God…I like to call that Thanks Living.  How do you say thank you for such an overwhelming gift…I can tell you that it doesn’t fit on a ‘thank you’ note.  Sometimes, the best way to ay thank you is with you entire life.

I’d like to share a prayer from a young man in Haiti named Vedrine. Vedrine was an orphan who was rescued from the streets of Port-au-Prince, and so you can imagine how cruel his life must have been, but still he finds the words to express his own Thanks Living.  This is his prayer:

 “God, I believe in you.
 I love you.
 Thank you for all you do for me.
 Is there anything I can do for you?”

Just for a day
let peace abide.
Just for a day,
let the ancient land called holy
soaked in blood, be quiet.
 
Just for a day
let peace abide.
Bring them away
from Bethlehem and Jerusalem,
from Nazareth and Nablus,
from Damascus, Riyadh and Amman.
 
Just for a day
let peace abide.
Bring them away from violence
slouching toward Annapolis;
unclench fists, open hardened hearts,
shatter foolish pride,
encourage risk takers -
Israelis, Arabs, Christians, Jews, Muslims ¬ with the holiness that births newness.
 
Just for a day
let peace abide.
Let the ancient land called holy
soaked in blood, be quiet.
For in your gaze a single day is a thousand years.

———–
Annapolis summit. 2007

I just returned from Israel and the West Bank. Is there any hope left for peace with Israel and the Palestinians? Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post suggests that the last vestige of any remaining hope may life in the Annapolis Summit scheduled for early December. I agree with him. But, as always, the stakes are very high with both Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert putting their lives on the line for this chance at a two-state solution. Once a hawk, Olmert is now calling for everything to be on the table. Abbas, for his part, has affirmed Israel’s right to exist and his willingness to negotiate for peace, something the hard line Hamas opposition and other extremists continues to refuse. On the Israeli side, there is a Jewish minority opposed to any negotiations. This is a fringe element in Israeli society. During my visit, the great majority of Israeli citizens and Palestinians are ready to make a deal that will end the violence, provide a state for Palestinians and ensure Israel’s existence. That is the only road left for peace. Still Hamas refuses and Diehl suggests that this current effort at peacemaking may result in a surge of violence as it has in the past. Olmert himself has evoked the memory of Yitzak Rabin as he seeks to bring about a peace that he calls “the legacy I will leave.”

What will have to happen is a cessation of violence, including what Diehl refers to a Palestinian “militias” harassing the population. While I was in Jericho I met with Bassem Eid, a Palestinian and the Director of the Independent Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, whose purpose is to monitor and report human rights abuses by Palestinians. He founded the agency in 1996 because no one was paying any attention to the human rights abuses among the Palestinians, particularly in the intifada of 1994. The most recent report of his agency, which is available on the web, is a narrative of abuse that is virtually unknown in the West.  See it here: http://www.phrmg.org/

Consequently, Bassem is not a popular person among his own people and especially the Hamas leadership who consider him a collaborator with the enemy for speaking truthfully, particularly about the intimidation and persecution of Christians in the Gaza strip. His story is one that deserves to be told.

He reported that 75% of the Palestinians want the current intifada to stop immediately. While Hamas continues to agitate for violence against Israelis, the moderate Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza have no solid leadership to provide an alternative vision. There is a huge internal conflict between Hamas and more moderate Palestinians, of which Eid is one along with some of the Fatah leadeship including Abbas. According to Eid, Yassar Arafat was a complete failure for the Palestinian people. For Eid, the primary question now is whether they will learn anything from his mistakes. Peace with Israel and a Palestinian state hang in the balance with the answer to that question.

In Gaza, Hamas is ruling by intimidation and continues to violate the human rights of the people there, in particular the few Christians still living there who are considered enemies by Hamas, solely on the basis of their religion. For Christians, they must either obey a hard Islamic rule imposed by Hamas or leave the area. Anyone who is not Muslim is considered godless and treated as such.  Bassem Eid says this must come to an end if there is to be peace in the Middle East.

In all honesty, there is nothing in Bassem Eid’s story that is connected to the ancient story of Zacheus other than the town, the trees and a man unpopular among his own people. But I just couldn’t keep Zacheus out of my imagination as I sat in Jericho listening to a truth-teller who may be nearing the status of outcast among his people.

Is the Church becoming nothing more than a beautiful place to get married?  This question comes as one among many questions being asked about the future of the Church and its place in the social fabric of America.  As a Pastor of Young Adult ministry, I hear many such questions from that faithful generation of Christian saints who lived through the golden age of Mainline Protestantism.  Think what you will about the authenticity of mainline Protestant churches and the approach to ministry they represent, but these are the institutions that were established, yes by the will of Jesus Christ, but also by the blood and sweat of our venerable elders.  When I hear these people ask questions about the youth and young adults, when I hear them worry aloud about “whether we’re losing the next generation of Presbyterians,” in my case, what I hear is a deep-seated anxiety that all for which this generation labored will be for naught.
 

This is not a reflection about the shortcomings of mainline Protestantism, nor is it a lecture in human finitude to point out the impossibility for human kind to ever know what is good, right or God’s will for the Church.  Rather, this brief reflection will examine the various responses to that deep-seated anxiety running rampant through the Presbyterian denomination, if nowhere else. 

After looking up the on-line July/August issue of The Presbyterian Layman, I saw a series of articles with titles like “46,544 Members lost” or “Church Exodus Continues.”  Clearly, this anxiety is not limited to a small minority of Church-goers…this anxiety lies at the heart of much of our ecclesial conflict.  I certainly do not wish to turn a blind eye to the problems of my denomination, to the sliding membership and loss of vitality, but I must confess that I am much more uncomfortable with the idea of using our membership roles as a litmus test for faithfulness.  In chapter 3 of the Gospel of Luke, the devil assails Jesus with three temptations - three temptations that seek to mislead Jesus concerning his identity as the Son of God.  The third and final of these temptations is that he should position himself on the very top of the Temple and throw himself down, confident that God would rescue him from certain death.  Jesus rebuffs this temptation, and this interpretation of his Son-ship as meaning that he never has to die.  Further into his ministry, Jesus does set his sights on Jerusalem, and he does position himself up on a high place…not the Temple, but rather on a hillside called the Skull, where he willingly embraces death.  The Temptation narrative ends with a foreboding warning that the devil “departed from him until an opportune time.”

That opportune time is now, and it is the Church that is tempted.  When we measure our health and faithfulness by the numbers of people filling our pews we, too, will be tempted to believe that being the Church of Jesus Christ means that we never have to risk death.  It will be as if Christ never uttered the words “…those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will lose it.” 

Yes the sliding numbers in my denomination concern me, and I would be fooling myself to pretend that they don’t, but I am equally concerned with the willingness with which my brothers and sisters sacrifice what is right and faithful for what is successful and popular.  The entire Reformation was never meant to create an institution…it began as a movement to reform the Church; to call it back to this self-sacrificing foundation laid by Christ himself.  Why don’t we continue this tradition of being a voice that calls the Church to that which is most faithful and loving and kind, even if it means putting our life at risk.
 
But what of the next generation?  What about the future of this reforming Church?  Instead of focusing on the sliding membership, I choose to focus on Sam and Tanya.  Sam and Tanya are a young couple who did get married at the Church where I serve.  My wife and I attended both the wedding and reception. During their toast to one another, Tanya thanked her family and friends for driving all the way from Sioux City where she grew up, to her wedding here in Kansas City.  She explained that it was important to her and Sam that they take their wedding vows in the Church where THEY have chosen to lodge their membership and their service…it is THEIR Church.  You see, it’s not just a place to get married, not for everybody…and that’s where I find my hope!

John Updike once said he wanted to write with the same dedication as the monks whose vocation is to carve Psalms on the bottom side of choir seats. I can’t find the reference anymore but the quote has lived with me for years. Why? I imagine those beautifully carved choir seats that few people will ever see and wonder about those monks practicing their craft with that same knowledge. Did they carve for the joy of their art, and the praise of God, without any desire that they be recognized? Were there moments when they longed to flip up the seats for the world to see?  And what about John Updike? What did he perceive in these monks that brought him to desire the same attitude for his craft? I think he wanted to find that sweet spot where one’s vocation is fully lived without regard for the recognition of others.

This brings to mind another man who sought a way to live his vocation fully without regard for the recognition of others. Jean Vanier, the French Roman Catholic, who many years ago was so moved by the conditions of mentally disabled adults in an institution in France that he founded a home to care for them. In the beginning he took in only a few men and began to form a community of mutual care. He called this community L’Arche and now there are communities all over the world of developmentally disabled adults living alongside those without disabilities sharing their lives in a very deep way. What makes this similar to those monks carving the bottom of choir seats is the joy that exudes from the people living fully into their vocation. Some of the residents at L’Arche communities could be pursuing high profile careers making large sums of money. Instead, they have found the deepest joy by living in deep friendship with severely disabled persons whose lives are defined not by utilitarian values but by qualities of human dignity alone. Those who live with the same attitude as those monks carving choir seats receive the gifts that severely disabled persons have to offer.

One of the more remarkable things about the congregation I serve is the inclusion of persons with developmental disabilities. We have a group of adults with mental disabilities who have been fully embraced in this community for years. The church has developed a purposefully designed curriculum for their “Friends” class and several members rotate as teachers, while other drive them from their group homes. They participate in worship, sitting alongside persons with advanced degrees and high profile positions in Washington DC. They live with us as a great witness to the love of God and the fullness of humanity.

Last week my wife and I hosted a party for them, as we do each year, at our home along with their teachers and drivers. Our time together was one of the most astonishing events bearing witness to the transforming power of a community of love and compassion.  This year we went with a Hawaiian theme - complete with hula dancing and special Hawaiian music and food. It was just a delight for all of us to be having so much fun and laughter together. I’m certain this is what Jesus meant when he talked about the reign of God coming among us when the least are first and we all sit at table together.

I’m from Cairo, a city that during the day is home to an estimated 18 million people. Driving through the city – I should say megapolis – is the nightmare you would imagine and crossing the streets requires a strong heart, some would say a death wish.

Which is why what happens every evening during the month of Ramadan is nothing short of a miracle. To say the city turns into a ghost town wouldn’t even begin to describe the transformation.

Ramadan is the month when Muslims fast from sunrise till sunset, which these days is around 6:15 pm. It is customary to break the fast with your family or with a group of friends because Muslims are taught that you gain extra blessings for feeding a fasting person and so invitations crisscross as relatives tug at you to join them for the iftaar – the meal that breaks the fast.

So about an hour or so before iftaar – if you are lucky enough to get away from work that early – you could easily get caught in a nasty traffic jam that feels as if someone had thrown you into the middle of those 18 million people who fill the city during the day.

But as sunset approaches, it is as if someone has taken an eraser and wiped clear the huge city squares of their people. The streets seem to get wider as they empty of cars and pedestrians and the cacophony of horns and conversations conducted at three times their normal volume level just so that you can be heard, all of it dissipates. It is as if every building in the city sends out a collective hush in eager anticipation of one sound: the call to prayer, or adhan, announcing the evening prayer and the go ahead to break the fast.

The stillness, the silence and the emptiness of those sunset moments during Ramadan in Cairo are incredibly moving. Hungry and thirsty at the end of the day-long fast, you feel you could hear the angels whispering and the slightest act of kindness encapsulates for me the lessons of Ramadan: self-control and generosity.

Sometimes, in a mad rush to get home in time to eat with my family, I’d jump into a cab that was miraculously available and whose driver was eager to push the speed limit to get home quickly as well. We didn’t always make it in time and as we sped through the empty streets of Cairo we’d hear a dozen adhans – Cairo is after all the City of a Thousand Minarets. The driver would reach into a bag of dates he’d brought with him just in case he was out driving when it was time to break his fast and he would turn around and offer me the first one. It was hard to fight the tears of gratitude and connection as I gladly accepted one.

Looking around the city, I could see bus drivers whose vehicles were long ago empty of their loads, parking their buses and getting out to eat at the Tables of the Merciful, tables full of food that wealthy families in each neighborhood provided for the poor and those who needed to break their fast while still out.

I live in New York City now, another crowded, cacophonous metropolis. And as the setting sun turns the sky into a palette of lilac and rosy pink, I look out the window and remember those sunset moments of kindness and generosity from half a world away.

It was a cube consisting of many separate pieces of charred wood, each piece dangling from a thin black wire, hanging from the ceiling of the De Young Museum in San Francisco.  This artwork by Cornelia Parker was entitled “Anti-Mass”.  It was a compelling sight.  It reminded me of the way blackened embers are suspended in air above a fire, as if momentarily weightless.  The installation was thing of simple beauty, taking the mind to a place beyond words. 
 
Then I read the card next to the installation and found that I was looking at the creatively re-arranged remains of a black Baptist church in Alabama which had been destroyed in a racist arson attack.  “Anti-Mass” was at least a double-play on words – referring to the airborne wood, and the violent act against the worship of the congregation that once met inside it.
 
As soon as I knew the story behind the wood, I sensed that I was in the presence of the sacred.  In a way, this work of art was the resurrection of that burned church.  The artist had taken that terrible act of racist arson and turned it inside out and upside down.  Just as the early Christians turned the crucifixion inside out and upside down, transforming the cross from a terrifying symbol of Roman state power into a hopeful sign of salvation.
 
When I got home from the museum, I reflected on the striking difference in my experience of the artwork between my first glance at it and my later discovery of the wood’s source.  It revealed how influenced I am by the emotional and spiritual associations that I make, or that others make for me.  It revealed that I, and the rest of us, seem to be primed for experiences of the sacred.  There is a God-shaped cube inside of me, ready to be filled by encounters with divinity.
 
It also revealed the resurrecting, redeeming power given to each of us by God.  We have within each of us a remarkable measure of divine energy which we can use to turn hopelessness into hope, violence into compassion, despair into positive vision, destruction into creativity.  If a church building, burned down in an act of hatred, can be brought back to life in such a remarkable manner, what isn’t possible for us, both as individuals and as a collective? 
 
What creative, redemptive leap can our nation take to help the people of Iraq turn seared flesh, twisted metal, and dusty rubble into elements of peace and prosperity?  How can we take the emotional charge from the injuries and insults we each suffer, and direct that energy toward healing and wholeness?  What can we do to transform the church from being a reliquary for old dogma into becoming a living spiritual community for the present? 
 
If an artist can bring about a resurrection with nothing more than wire and bits of burnt wood, think of what you and I can bring to life!  Each counter-intuitive action we take to change ourselves and the world for the better is a form of artwork, as worthy of “ooohs” and “aaahs” as anything hanging in a museum…

They were traveling up the center aisle to see the body. Moving with faithful footsteps toward the one they dearly loved. Tears filled their eyes and they held tight to daughters and sisters as they came forward to view the deceased, hands folded calmly, suit freshly pressed.

I had lost the battle, you see. My pastoral sensitivity overran my pastoral authority. I am fairly new to the world of ordained parish ministry with a special focus in pastoral care. My newness does not mean that I am new at presiding in worship at funerals. With our congregations aging and with more and more “unchurched” people turning toward the church at the time of death—not knowing where else to go—pastors have a great gift and opportunity to travel alongside families who are grieving, families who are trying to figure out what to do with their dead. Pastors receive this gift frequently. My newness, in this case, meant that I presided over an open casket funeral. Not my practice, not my theology: but there the congregation was traveling up during a hymn to pay their last respects.

We believe that the funeral service is a “Witness to the Resurrection.” The funeral is the place where we affirm that in life and in death we belong to God. It is the place where we say aloud that death has no power to pull us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is the place where we give thanks to God for the gift of life experienced in the one we loved and where we place that one into God’s everlasting arms. All that is to say that the funeral is about God.

But then there is that person—that body: surrounded by memories and stories and jokes. There is that person—that body: surrounded by brothers and daughters, by colleagues and choir buddies—all with tales and lessons and laughter that they are bursting at the seams to share.

In my struggle, I turned to an amazing article, “O Sing to Me of Heaven: Preaching at Funerals,” by Tom Long (Journal for Preachers, Easter 2006). Long claims, “We have a tug of war between the quiet, but somewhat abstract, ideal of a worship service reflecting on the joy of the resurrection and the Oprah-esque carnival of anecdotes and memories.” I felt comforted that I was not alone in this tug of war. Long recounts what the funeral was for our Christian forebears: Christians washed, anointed and dressed in baptismal garments the bodies of the deceased. Then they would carry them to the grave, singing as they traveled. The dead were seen as saints traveling on to God. The focus was on the journey and ultimately the destination.

Traveling to God—not to a lifeless body—that is what we are doing at funerals. All of life is a pilgrimage toward God. The dead have finished the journey; they are home.

The next time I watch people travel up the center aisle at a funeral—the next time I receive that gift, I will try to speak a word about the One to whom we all are traveling, a word about the heaven to which we are going, and yes, a word about the person who is home and what there journey there was like.
 

Theology.
      What is it?
            Where does it lead?
                What difference does it make?

As a kid raised in a Southern Baptist family in a Southern Baptist home in a Southern culture (Louisiana, which could be considered “southern-kicked up a notch”, especially if you have read Rebecca Wells “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” and watched Emeril), I buhleved in Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit… the whole shebang. Every time there was a revival, I got saved all over again. At night, instead of monsters hiding the closet or under my bed, I was scared to shivers of hellfire and brimstone. Those monsters didn’t stand a chance of stoking my fear up against the righteous wrath of the holy, omnipotent God who was going to throw all the unrepentant and unholy children like me into the fiery lake of everlasting damnation. At least that’s what my pastor said.

I’ve probably been saved a hundred thousand times; every night that I can remember for as long as I was self-conscious, I prayed to anyone who was listening up there. I told ‘em that I was a rotten sinner, deserving of condemnation, but that I really wanted to live a holy life and be saved. Then I’d think about what boys think about alone at night, and I’d have to get saved all over again.

When I think about what my theology was at that age, my idea of “God” was not much better than the monsters that were hiding in my closet. “God” was a bit worse, however, because he was hiding in my head. Not only that, the “God” in my head was mirrored in my church, my family, my culture. I was theologically saturated in the God-as-savior/God-as-judge theology. I didn’t consider for a moment that the “God” in my head might not be equivalent to the Creator and Redeemer of the universe. It was the Creator/Redeemer.

In 6th grade, a good friend of mine, John David, was playing baseball one day. He was a star athlete, of whom I was insanely jealous. He could water ski so well that he was being recruited by Cypress Gardens (for all you non-water skiers, Cypress Gardens was the showcase for the best of the best waterskiing in the country). He was a natural at every sport he tried. But this day, he was striking out. He said that his head was hurting badly. Then, he went blind right there in the batter’s box. Come to find out, spinal fluid was backing up in his head and pressing on his optic nerve. When he was taken to the local hospital, the only thing they knew to do was to relieve the pressure, but the way they did the operation left him permanently blind.

John David’s family was understandably devastated. According to what our pastor had been telling us, God blesses us when we are good and chastises us when we aren’t. Logically then, they had done something that made God pretty upset. For the next several years, his family set out on a quest of repentance and supplication to get him healed. This seemed like a pretty cool idea to me, so I joined them. Our search led us far beyond Southern Baptist orthodoxy. In our world, Baptists don’t like God doing hocus pocus. I’m not sure why, but Baptists don’t usually cotton to people getting instantaneously healed or breaking out in tongues. But that’s exactly what we were looking for: someone who knew the right prayers, the right dance, someone who could call down the Holy Ghost to heal my best friend.

As John David’s family and I moved away from our Baptist church and its theology, we found ourselves persona non grata in that world. My parents were afraid I was getting mixed up with the wrong crowd, but they didn’t know how to confront me because I was getting even more involved in “church”. It’s not like I was drinking and smoking and carrying on like some of my siblings. I was as near to being angelic as any high school kid could be. It was actually a little scary, looking back on it; I was a complete geek and mostly what I thought about and talked about was God.

After a few years of traveling to see Kathryn Kuhlman (faith healer, duh!) and Oral Roberts (same; of Oral Roberts University fame….and well… that 900-foot Jesus he saw) and folks like that in and around Louisiana, we despaired of ever repenting enough or finding the right formula to get John David healed. His suffering opened up a whole new world of suffering that was all around me that I hadn’t seen. And as I became conscious of the vastness and indiscriminate nature of suffering, tough, intractable questions forced themselves upon me as I moved to college (a Southern Baptist college no less).

There, in that sedate, highly-controlled environment, one of the religion professors asked me a question that rocked my world. After a rather intense class session in which he and I were engaged in friendly combat, he took me aside and said, “Robert, do you believe that God is in control of all things?” “Of course,” I responded wholeheartedly, without reservation. He continued, “If you do, then how do you put together the control that God wields in every situation and the necessity of human freedom, if we are to make a free decision for salvation?” That one question detonated in my life with the force of a nuclear explosion.

I tried to reword the question but I couldn’t shake the logic: If God is in control, then we can’t be completely free to repent and ask Jesus into our hearts. And if we can’t be free to do that, if somehow God controls even that action of ours, then how can anyone be so responsible for their actions and sinfulness that they can be condemned to eternal damnation? How can human beings be held responsible by God if we do not have free will?

I stormed out of his office, and before I slammed the door in his face, I yelled, “You are wrong!” Within a week, I was back in his office apologizing and telling him that I had become an atheist. If my idea about God was wrong, then obviously God simply didn’t exist. If I remember correctly, the professor politely smiled and slowly shook his head, probably thinking, “this too shall pass.”

For the next year or so, I was a fervent atheist on that God-fearing campus, and I was eager to convert all my friends to my newfound religious antipathy. I must say that I did have some success, and those of like mind formed something of an anti-spiritual covenant group, in which several of us held each other up in logic and will, to stand firm against the evil Christian-mongers. We were the opposite of John Wesley’s Oxford club and their disciplined life of personal and social holiness. We were devoted, but not to godliness. Our theology was now atheology; our vision and hope for life was a sarcastic humanism.

After a while, I began noticing a profound depth to existence that I couldn’t deny. I felt a connectedness in nature, a presence beyond all presence, a feeling of infinite interiority and transcendence beyond the see-touch realm. I didn’t know what to call it – I certainly did not want to call it God – but I couldn’t deny its reality. It presented itself to me; I didn’t go looking for it and didn’t want to encounter it. But it found me.

This is the story of my awakening to a realm beyond my imagining, beyond what I can see or touch, beyond what I wanted to believe. Experiencing awe-inspiring transcendence and intimate immanence, I set out to explore my experience…and others’ experiences…and how others named the mysterium tremendum. I went to seminary to find out how to talk about it; I continued on to another Master’s degree to figure out how to act faithfully in light of it. But it wasn’t until I was in a doctoral program that I found a theology that fit, that named my experience and made sense of the world around me.

Probably I’m just denser than most others; maybe my schooling took me astray. But my long and circuitous journey into a theology that fit taught me a little about how theology happens and the difference a fitting theology makes. I’ve shared a little of my journey here. It would be fascinating to hear from others about their journey on the ocean of experience, directed by winds of human reflection, drifting into realms of confusion and clarity.

In the next few of my monthly blogs, I want to explore experiences and reflections on some key ideas for Christians: spirituality, incarnation, Trinity, ecclesial/church life, etc. Untold volumes have been written on each of these topics, and I am not one to write any more. But I suspect there are many folks who are looking beyond what they already think for a theology that helps them make sense of their complicated and confusing experience, of the vast world all around, and of that still, small voice who continues to beckon us beyond all everything we know. I don’t know if what I have to share will shed any light, but perhaps together we can discover a bit more of the light that is within and beyond us all.

This is a story about neighbors.

Marduk is my neighbor. We share a fence in the suburbs of Maryland near Washington, DC. “In my country” or “in my village” is how Marduk begins many sentences, having lived in Iran until seven years ago when he moved to Maryland with his wife and two children. He moved next door two years ago. When his wife’s mother became too riddled with Alzheimer’s disease to live alone, she moved in with them. Occasionally she would leave the house, as is common for Alzheimer’s without very close supervision, and wander aimlessly. Now she lives in a more secure environment.

Marduk drives a bus. He leaves for work at 4 AM. He speaks like many others who have learned English on their own. For instance, subject and verb occasionally disagree and words are sometimes left out. “I like, I like!” is one of his favorite phrases. When I asked how he learned English he explained that after the revolution English was no longer taught in any schools and rarely spoken. (The revolution is code for the fall of the Shah of Iran and the subsequent reign of Iranian fundamentalists and political allies.)  When I first met him he was quick to share that he is not a practicing Muslim. “We like Christmas!”  I laughed at his candor and noted how much he wanted to assure me of his background.  Was he afraid I would treat him with suspicion if he were devout? I wonder. Our other neighbors who are modern practicing Muslims have no such worries. But that is after many conversations.  Marduk’s wife sells perfume at the local Mall and she speaks in English all day. “Every day she is learning more and more words. Me? I don’t have to have English. People get on the bus and tell me where they want off.  That’s all. But I am trying.  That’s why I like to talk to you!”

I listen with curiosity. The other day I asked him about his home in the south of Iran. “In my village it is always hot, very hot. Makes Florida seems frigid in summer. We never went out of the house before eight at night. Still hot.” His comment came at the end of a very hot day and the joyous completion of a project I didn’t think was possible.

Early in the summer I began negotiations with a contractor to rebuild the twenty-year old sagging wood fence that we share. The price came in much too high. Marduk said, “let’s do it together! We can. We can.” I hemmed and hawed, unsure of this budding construction partnership. But my wife agreed, “That’s a great idea. You can do it.” When she said that I sighed, knowing I was defeated, bracing for the heat and humidity, and knowing how “easy projects” are rarely easy.

Marduk (the name is the same as the ancient Babylonian god) suggested we go to Lowe’s and pick up the fence posts. I had some spare fence rails that we had salvaged from another project but we still needed several posts.  It is quite a helpful learning experience, culturally and personally, to shop at Lowe’s with an Iranian immigrant who speaks English with his own distinct grammar. But we did it and to my growing surprise I began to relish this opportunity to work together. But not always. I didn’t on the day that I discovered my tools locked in Marduk’s garage when I wanted to put in some work alone of the project. I bounded over to his house. “Why are my tools locked up?” I asked impatiently. He smiled impishly. “We will work together! Not alone. I like us to work together.” What could I say to this neighbor taking such happiness in working together?  “Okay.” So there we were men, both Americans one from South of Atlanta, the other from the South of Tehran, sweating and grunting in the hot sun. It took us several days and several conversations, but we did it. Now Marduk stands on this deck and I on mine admiring our work. “I like, I like,” he says, “we do it together!”

Jesus once said love your neighbor as yourself.  This is a story about two men, from vastly different backgrounds, becoming neighbors, and building a neighborhood once fence at a time.

Earlier this spring I joined a group of preachers studying the lectionary texts for the season of Pentecost.  We were reminded of the quip attributed to Alfred Loisy the French New Testament scholar: “Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom but what we got was the church.”

The clear implication of that statement is that we ought all to be disappointed.  As we looked at the assigned texts for the Pentecost season we wondered whether it was possible for the church– with all our attention to institutional preservation and denominational agendas—to keep any attachment whatsoever to the promises and demands of God’s reign.

Shortly after the seminar ended we were back home attending our local church.  We discovered when we arrived that it was Youth Sunday, and though my own preaching career began on a Youth Sunday many years ago, I wasn’t exactly filled with eager anticipation.

Yet the music was affecting, the scriptures appropriate and the brief homilies thoughtful and faithful both.

Most impressively at the conclusion of the service the lay sponsors of the youth group said a few words about each of the students who were graduating from high school in the week to come.

Among the group there was a young man who had won a nationwide competition in epidemiology and with it a large scholarship to one of our most prestigious colleges.  There was a young woman who is developmentally slow who is clearly among the most popular members of the group.  One young man was not at all certain what he might do next and another had his life planned out for the next fifty years.  A seventeen year old single mother held her newborn daughter in her arms; the proud grandparents stood beside her looking on.

What was clear in each of the testimonies was how much these young people had mattered to the church and how much the church had mattered to them.

Maybe it wasn’t the Kingdom of God.  But it wasn’t far from it, either.

Henri Nouwen wrote that sometimes it is in and through our sufferings that we come to know God and experience God’s call.  Entering into the suffering of the poor is one way to become obedient, to become a listener of God.  “Suffering accepted and shared in love breaks down our selfish defenses and sets us free to accept God’s guidance,” Nouwen said. 

Perhaps no other figure in the 20th century entered into the suffering of others as dramatically as Mother Teresa.  It had been a life-long dream of mine to visit Calcutta and to come to understand her ministry more fully.  I went to volunteer at Kalighat, Mother Teresa’s Center for the Dying in Calcutta.  Upon my arrival, I remember so clearly the motives at play in my mind, most especially the desire, as Nouwen described…to enter into the suffering of the world, so as to know the world better and serve God more faithfully. But what I found I could never have prepared for or imagined.  Kalighat is filled with cots of very sick people. The illnesses the people were suffering from were ones I had only read about in books.  Death seemed to be lurking in every corner.  The Sisters of Charity were busy administering basic medical treatment with whatever had been donated that week.  As I walked around trying to find a place to be useful, I felt totally out of my element.  Full of fear, I shut down so that I would not feel any emotion too strongly.  I realized that I was frightened, but I could not understand why.  I spent this first day cleaning dishes before returning to my hotel room, which is when the fear and shock finally sank in.  Never had I seen so many people so sick, so absolutely destitute, and so young.  How could God allow such misery, such abject poverty, such darkness?  Kalighat was, it seemed to me, a true living hell.

I returned the next day and was given a new job of drying the women off with a towel as they came out of the shower.  The Sisters would bathe them, and one by one, I would dry them.  I continued in this role over the next few weeks, and between shower times I began to visit with the patients who were awake.  Most of the patients were too weak to speak, and those who could spoke only Bengali. But in these encounters I learned a new language, spoken with the eyes and the smallest of gestures. It was a language of love, gratitude, compassion and mercy.  My own inhibitions and fears began to fade, and I felt for the first time what it meant to be open to God’s love, to plunge in, heart first, stretched between communion with God and the limitations of our bodied lives.

Just when I thought there was nothing but despair, I found God. I saw the power of God’s love healing the spirits of those who were physically ill, and through their generous spirits, healing me. 

I remember years ago Dr. Bernie Siegel saying to his patients, most of whom were suffering cancer, “In the face of uncertainty, it is not wrong to hope.” Countering the conventional medical advice of the time, which he found to be utterly pessimistic and even destructive, Siegel was telling his patients to summon all their courage and faith to hope for a positive future and to live within the power of that hope. “To refuse to hope is to choose to die sooner rather than later.” I remember this well because at the time I heard it, my wife was suffering the ravages of breast cancer. She is a survivor and still continues vigilant in hope.

Hope is the power of life, the refusal to hope is the way of death. I think one of greatest threats to sustaining communities of faith, compassion and mercy, is a creeping sense of hopelessness. I have heard folks express this about efforts to stop the drastic effects of climate change. It’s too late.

I have heard the same about Darfur. What can we do? To keep this hopelessness at an acceptable emotional distance, entertainment and endless distractions have become the drug of choice. Churches have aided this addiction by adopting the norms of a celebrity culture that mainlines entertainment to numb hopelessness. Dropping our drugs of choice entertainment and distraction is the necessary place to begin to hope.

Another place is the book of Revelation. Yup. You heard me. Revelation, the source for whackos is also a deep source of hope, too. Though it was originally written to encourage Christians suffering persecution to persevere, it is precisely the book for our time. More than persecution, the link from their experience to our own is the debilitating sense that God has abandoned us to our predicament. This extraordinary letter, so maligned, misunderstood and misinterpreted, is an imaginative vision casting of God’s future intended to counter the sense of abandonment. John’s aim is comprehensive; speaking forth the largest hope of all. “The leaves of the Tree are for the healing of the nations.” The healing of the nations? Don’t you yearn for that?
 
One might suppose the image of the new world would be a garden filled with fragrant flowers in bloom with sheep grazing alongside gently flowing streams sparkling with sunlight. Surprise! What comes into view is a city, not a garden, the New Jerusalem.

This vision of a human habitation - a city no less diverse than Jerusalem - filled with light and beauty, is the vision enlivens our lives.

Like John, I looked up and I saw a new Khartoum, a new Chicago, a new Baghdad.
I looked up and I saw a new Washington, DC, a new Los Angeles, a new Kabul.
I looked up and I saw the people of God imagining … the new coming into being in the center of the old. And the powers of death were fleeing the fierce power of hope.

Until that times comes, I pray for this fierce hope.