If Barack Obama asked me to endorse him, I’d have to excommunicate him for his own good.

That’s my conclusion after the messy consequences of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s association with Obama, and of Pastor John Hagee’s proclaimed support for John McCain.  The gonzological utterances of these pastors have given all of us Christian clergy a bad rap, to say nothing of the harm they’ve done to the candidates they aimed to support.  The best thing that religious leaders can do for their favored candidates, and for our profession, is to avoid the entanglement that comes with endorsement.

That won’t stop me, nor should it stop spiritual communities, from taking action on issues that figure significantly in the upcoming presidential election.  Issues like the overwhelming need for comprehensive health care reform, so that Americans finally get universal, single-payer medical coverage that is enjoyed by citizens of most other industrialized nations.  Issues like America’s occupation of Iraq, which needs to end swiftly.  Issues like how to deal with Iran and Syria and Palestine/Israel - it is time for our nation to show its true strength by talking directly with their leaders, working hard to deal with the root causes of conflict wherever possible, instead of stonewalling and saber-rattling.  Issues like ending America’s disastrous “war on drugs” and adopting a more humane and pragmatic “harm-reduction” approach instead.   Issues like breaking up our prison-industrial complex, giving judges more flexibility in sentencing and giving inmates more opportunities for education and rehabilitation.  Issues like marriage equality:  giving support for the California court decision making gay and lesbian marriages possible.  (Anybody out there whose straight marriage is falling apart because gay marriage is now allowed?) 

Strongly as I feel about these issues, the Christ inspires me to a humility that avoids claiming that my opinion is God’s, a humility that admits that I don’t have the last word on how society best should be ordered.  The Christian faith calls us to care deeply about all the great issues of our day, and take action in response.  But it doesn’t unequivocally explain how these questions should be answered. 

So I’ll stick with Jesus’ gospel of kindness and love that impels me to care about matters political, and also reminds me to stay open to the perspectives of people who disagree with me.  I’ll avoid the pitfalls of mixing my pastoral role with partisanship: I’d never vote for a politician who would advertise my endorsement!

What makes the Bible such an interesting collection of writings is also what makes them so maddeningly frustrating at times.  The fact that the Bible holds together so many different documents and different theological perspectives is precisely what makes it so timeless.  At times, however, the more peculiar theological trajectories contained in these pages rears its head in some really quite disastrous ways.  Take this pastoral call I received for instance…

In my place of ministry, the pastoral staff alternates weekends of being the recipient of messages from our on-call answering service.  It’s our way of making sure that people can always get in touch with a pastor if need be.  Several weeks ago, I received a message from the service from a woman who I knew to be mentally ill in some way, but I really had no understanding of her condition as I dialed her number.  For the next thirty minutes I listened to her agonize over the guilt she felt for failing to remain in a constant state of prayer, for being constantly lured away from her spiritual duty by the everyday acts of eating or sleeping.  It broke my heart to hear her speak of the depths of her sinfulness and how tired she was of being tested by God.

As I listened, I began to wonder where she internalized these messages of what is good and what is bad and why the Lord is constantly testing her faithfulness.  Then it occurred to me that it would not be so very hard to internalize such expectations and theological convictions from simple reading of the Bible or an attentive ear to a sermon.  1 Thessalonians exhorts us to “pray without ceasing,” which given free reign in a legalistic faith would easily translate to a guilt over not praying without ceasing.  Then there is Job, of course, where a totally faithful servant of the Lord is put through countless tests, all with God’s permission, to see if he will in time come to despise the Lord.  Again, at a naïve read, it would be all too easy to hear in this story that God tests us without ceasing to ensure that we are in fact faithful. 

I know that these texts are complex and that, with proper exegesis, we can deduce valuable insights from the wisdom contained therein.  I do not want to say that we should avoid these texts or any difficult texts for that matter.  But there is also another level at which these texts are heard, and sometimes that is the straightforward sense of the text.  It grieved me to see an already troubled woman further damaged by her association with the Christian faith, a faith that I would hope could offer comfort and peace to her already fragile mind. 

I feel as if there is some lesson to be learned here for homiletics.  When dealing with a particularly multivalent text, especially one where the logical conclusion of the text leads us down a dangerous theological and psychological path, we owe it to our communities to say up front, in plain speech, what the text is and is not about.  If there is a harmful conclusion to be drawn from that reading, let’s refute it right up front and not defer that task to the delicate matters of rhetoric and homiletic style.  After all, we really must come to grips with the fact that, for many listeners in a worship pew, the first five minutes is all they’re going to give us.

A decisive moment in my shift to understanding church as a verb, as enacted, as an incarnational reality, occurred as we were tromping through the wilderness. Literally. In the middle of a North Carolina forest near Ashville, I had taken a group of divinity students on a wilderness adventure in which a near-disaster was redeemed.

At the time I was a professor at Yale Divinity School teaching a course entitled, “Encountering God in Creation.” The course was designed around a ten-day camping trip in a wilderness area where there would be no showers, no electricity, no take-out; nothing but raw nature. Somehow we had the crazy idea that we would come to encounter God in a deeper way if we loaded ourselves up like pack mules and left all traces of civilization. By the end of the first day of arduous hiking with seventy pound backpacks, we had become a collective voice crying in the wilderness, hoping for our path to be made straight, wishing we were anywhere but there, praying that around the next bend a Holiday Inn would appear.

As a boy scout, I had done a little camping in my youth, but my most recent experience of sleeping outdoors was in our backyard with my children, neither of whom lasted the night. I was certainly not qualified to lead anyone off the beaten path, much less into a wilderness area where we would be setting up camp, cooking, and avoiding wild beasts. So the camping trip was organized and led by two wilderness guides, both of whom were rather hardcore Outward Bound drill sergeants. Their idea of fun was marching every day from dawn till dusk up and down steep mountainous terrain, finding our “limits”. What even our guides had not anticipated was the capricious temperament of Mother Nature, who blessed us with every form of precipitation possible. We marched through snow, slid on ice, and slogged through torrential rain. It was awful and we were miserable, and our frazzled spirits reflected our harsh conditions. We growled and snapped at each other as we set up tents, cooked our gruel, and collapsed from utter exhaustion in soggy sleeping bags.

By the way, God was nowhere to be found.

On the eighth and gloomy morning of our wilderness ordeal, the day’s agenda was to break camp, pack up, celebrate eucharist, and head home. A few of the young men traipsed off to a nearby river for a swim. While the rest of us were cleaning up from breakfast, we could hear their howls of pleasure and pain in the distance as they played in the frigid water. Their delight lifted our spirits and washed away our melancholy. When they returned from their icy baptism and we began to pack up for our departure, the mood of our entire troop lightened, and in agreement, the clouds parted and the sun shone lovingly on us.

If we had left then, without celebrating communion, I daresay the entire experience would have been considered a failure. There were some among us, including myself, for whom God was distant and inaccessible. I thought that perhaps the ritual of communion would be experienced as an empty gesture, but since I had carried the bread and juice all the way, I did not want it to be for nothing. So, I instructed everyone to go off by themselves for a while, and at the appointed time to return with a symbol of what they had discovered and who they had become during the week. While they were away – probably getting in touch with their inner couch potato –  I set up a make-shift altar out of rocks and arranged some logs in a circle for us to sit on.

One by one, the members of our group walked back and took their places around the circle. When we had all gathered, I initiated what I thought would be a rather perfunctory ritual. I was unprepared for the liturgical drama that ensued. Each person placed a symbol on the altar. Referring to a piece of tree bark, or moss, or rocks, or an unexpected flower, they testified about what had happened to them over the week, that their lives were intertwined with the others, that in retrospect the struggles with nature and with each other vividly demonstrated their interdependence upon one another for their very survival. They recognized that the community they had formed over the week was one in which they helped and hurt each other, their interactions were both nourishment and poison, the community they formed was both life-giving and toxic. In all the ambiguity of the journey, they had offered themselves to one another, and time after time, they saw the face of Christ in one another.

When it came time to invoke the Holy Spirit and say the words of institution, I realized several things. First, I did not have to invoke the Spirit, who had been hiding and working among us all the time. Second, as I looked at the altar that was covered with the debris of our journey along with bread and cup, I realized that we had been offering ourselves to one another the entire week. Sometimes we held back, sometimes we rejected each other. But more often than we had realized, we had given of ourselves for the sake of another and for the group as a whole. We had, to greater and lesser extent, placed ourselves on the altar, hoping and praying that the Holy Spirit would transform our meager offering for the sake of the body of Christ. Over the week and at this moment in particular, not only was bread and cup changed, but more importantly we were changed. It was apparent in hindsight that deus absconditus had been at work among us, but surreptitiously. Through our trials, little by little, God was transforming the ambiguity of our lives into living bread for one another such that we came to share a common life.

Our communion in Christ – only now recognized as such – was not a life of leisure and plenty but rather entailed hard work, conflict, and suffering. We came to understand the week as a baptism – of water and snow and ice – into a new life. Viewed mainly in retrospect, we were being raised to new life in the Spirit and shedding sinful preoccupations with ourselves and with things that do not ultimately matter. Our journey together had been a kind of baptismal death to self that prepared us for this moment, for this sharing, for a transformation and resurrection into new life.

After breaking the bread and raising the cup, we shared the common meal by giving and receiving, each to another. The bread and cup were passed from hand to hand around the circle. Through tears and laughter, each gave to the other; each received from another. In so doing, we were following Christ’s admonition to “do this in remembrance of me.” We re-membered Christ. By grace we participated in his life more fully.

After singing a hymn, we were dismissed and sent forth. We gathered our belongings, removed all traces of our presence from the site, and departed for home. We were very different persons and a very different community. That is no romantic, idealistic exaggeration. What I haven’t said yet was that there were two agnostics and one atheist on the trip (in divinity school, you ask??). In the months following the trip, each of these young people professed their faith and (re)dedicated their lives to Christ.

We had been changed but of course not completely and not forever. Shortly after our return, some of the conflicts of the trip surfaced again to cause dissention and pain. Much to my shame and dismay, the most serious of these conflicts occurred between one of the wilderness guides and myself, which to this day has not been reconciled.

Communion in Christ does not make us into saints overnight or over a week. Our community together will still be marked not only by joy, peace, and mutual understanding, but also by tensions, conflicts, and suffering. But this journey through the wilderness into communion taught me more about being church than just about anything else. It helped me to see how during the most ordinary activities of our lives, we give and receive from each other. In our families, in our schools, in friendship and with enemies, we are embedded in a matrix of relationship, an economy of sharing. So much of what we share is colored by sin. But quite a bit of what we give and receive is also beautiful and loving.

Our wilderness experience of communion helped me to understand more clearly what Jesus meant when he said to his disciples, “this is my body given for you.” He had indeed given of himself to his disciples during their three year journey together. He lived with them, taught them, admonished and blessed them; he poured himself into them. Each day, every day, the disciples had taken a little more of Jesus into themselves. Sharing the bread and the wine symbolized that very giving and receiving that the disciples and Jesus had experienced with each other.

And this is what is meant by following Jesus and to gather in his name: To place ourselves on the altar so that the Spirit of Christ can transform the ambiguity of our lives into holy nourishment for one another and for the world. And in giving and receiving from each other – in the Spirit – we become more fully the body of Christ for the sake of the world’s redemption…and our own.

The second real Muslim was elected to Congress last month.

I say “real” because Andre Carson, a Democrat who won a special election in Indiana to replace his grandmother who represented the state in Congress for 11 years until her death in December 2007, is not a closet or “stealth” Muslim as right wing commentators and opponents of Barak Obama have tried to make him.

Obama, who continues to lead Hillary Clinton in the race to become the Democratic candidate in presidential elections later this year, has said countless times he is Christian. His Kenyan father was born to a Muslim family but was an atheist. Obama’s opponents have ignored all that and have “accused” him of being a Muslim, as if it were a crime. Such rumor-mongering is a sad indictment of the fear and ignorance of Muslims that sadly exists among too many in the U.S.

Which is where Carson, 33, and the Keith Ellison (D-Minn), 44, the first Muslim congressman, come in.

Both men African-American converts to Islam. Comfortable as both Muslims and Americans, they are proof that not all Muslims in the U.S. are immigrants or newcomers who don’t understand American values.

When he took the oath standing next to his wife and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Carson said he was a “proud Muslim, a proud American and a proud Hoosier”.

Their comfort with both their American and Muslim identities makes them great role models and examples of why more Muslims in the U.S. should enter politics. They show young American Muslims that it is possible to be elected, despite the hateful comments of the right wing. And they are hopefully deterrents to the hateful comments of some of their fellow elected officials, some of whom have urged the bombing of Muslim holy sites while others have tried to paint all Muslims as terrorists.

Despite the fear-mongering surrounding Obama, it was a relief to hear that Carson’s faith was not an issue during his campaign.

A reporter at the ceremonial swearing-in asked Carson if he took the oath on the same Quran that Ellison used when he became the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress in 2005.

Carson held up the book he took the oath on and replied “It’s the U.S. Constitution” and smiled broadly.

It was a brilliant move because it so beautifully connected his election to the democratic principles that the U.S. Constitution defines.

Carson’s move was as wise as Ellison’s move to use for his ceremonial oath a Quran that used to belong to Thomas Jefferson.

After Ellison was elected, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) warned in a letter to a constituent “if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran”.

When I interviewed Ellison last year, he told me that one of his supporters had found out that Jefferson owned a copy of the Quran that was kept at the Library of Congress and suggested he use it for his ceremonial oath as a way of connecting himself to American history that would deflate the accusations of his opponents, like Goode.

“Thomas Jefferson felt there was something he had to learn from the Quran and it was really a joy just looking through the two volumes set,” Ellison told me.  “It was a fascinating experience (to look through it). I don’t think most Americans knew that Thomas Jefferson owned a Quran, I didn’t know and so now people know it and know that at the very founding of this society religious tolerance was an important value. So this religious intolerance that we see prevalent today is new and doesn’t go to the roots of the country.”

Carson has just 10 months in Congress as he fills out the remainder of his grandmother’s term. To remain in Congress, he must contest a pre-election in Indiana which will determine who runs in November for the next full two-year term.

Let’s hope he wins so that the two real Muslims remain in the House. Their role is of immense value.

Nothing is more effective at turning a person into a theologian than witnessing somebody else’s personal crisis.

Recently, I lost my job, or my job lost me.  I’m still not sure which description is more accurate.  In any case, it’s my first experience with unemployment.   I’m blessed with very supportive family and friends (including so many of you, dear readers of my “musings”).  But it’s still been a trying time.

People want to say and do the right things.  Their attempts at compassion are sincere.  While I am learning to receive gratefully their underlying intentions, some of their expressions make me wince.  And make me muse about what helps, and what doesn’t work so well, in offering sympathy to people in crisis. 

So in addition to the wonderful kindness that is being showered on my wife and myself, I am getting an off-the-job training course in compassion.

Consider these words which have been said to me, in one form or another, quite a few times in recent weeks:  “When God closes one door, He always opens another.”  When I first heard this one from one of my parishioners, right after my employment imploded, I was taken aback.  What about the people in Baghdad?  I thought.  When their doors are kicked in by men with machine guns, does God magically open another door for them to exit gracefully?  All too often, the answer is no.  Lots of people lose their jobs and go bankrupt.  Do we worship a God who washes away the front door of your nice house in New Orleans with a devastating flood, and then opens a trailer door for you in a bleak vacant lot, months later?  Are we expecting divine intervention to solve our personal or social problems, or are we taking action to make sure that when a door is closed, another one will open to something good?

And yet, the people who said it meant only the best for me.  Kind and caring souls who really did want another door to swing wide for me, with an even better job on the other side.  And of course that is what I want, as well.  So I took deep breaths and politely thanked them for their concern.

I don’t believe in a supernatural door-opening-and-closing God.  I believe in the God who is the door that opens to love.  We practice that divine love when we open our hearts to the pain of others, and listen, ask questions, and stay present for them.

Another line I heard repeatedly was this one:  “When it’s all over, you’ll be grateful for this.  You’ll wind up with a much better job than this one, and you’ll be glad this happened.” After enduring this assertion several times as my job was collapsing, I realized it had become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The idea of stocking shelves at Home Depot began to look like a blessing by comparison.  Those well-wishers had no more clue than I do about what my next job will be like. They forgot, if they knew in the first place, that mostly I really liked the job I lost.  It did not serve me to hear their assurance of something that’s impossible for them to predict.

But again, they meant well.  They were just revealing their discomfort with the stark reality that things can, and often do, get worse instead of better.  It was a spiritual discipline for me to be gracious in accepting their caring thoughts and their unconscious self-revelations.
 
Not even God can predict what will become of my career after this current debacle.  I am hopeful and in good spirits.  I am grateful for my severance package.  I get a lot of encouragement and I have some really good job leads.  I am in much better circumstances than so many other unemployed people.  But nobody can be sure how this current crisis will play out.  For me, it seems more God-like to accept my ignorance of the future, and just be present in the moment.

I am thankful for those who simply recognize my pain, inquire about my feelings, and offer their presence.  They are my guides in how to offer this kind of compassion to others.  I hope to pay their God-like goodness forward to the next person I encounter who goes through the loss of a job!

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.

Forgive me for dipping again into the waters of the Chronicle of Higher Education (see “Jesus’ Extreme Makeover:  Breaking the Aggression Cycle,” posted on this blog on Oct. 17, 2007) for my subject.  It is, frankly, a pleasure to observe that that weekly journal, often seemingly oblivious to church and church-related institutions, is itself revisiting church practice and teachings.  It is also interesting, and perhaps not surprising, to find in the pages of the Chronicle both colorful and challenging, as well as thin and painfully stereotypical, notions of church life.
     In a recent column, “The Limits of Community” (Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 7, 2007 section C p. 3), the author, who writes under the pseudonym “George Theodore”—I wonder whether that choice of name has anything to do with a certain George Theodore who was a likeable, slightly gawky, almost good-enough-for-prime-time outfielder for the hapless New York Mets teams of the mid 1970’s—argues that the “pragmatic demands of academic life mean that church-related colleges can’t always demonstrate compassionate Christianity.”  Having myself grown-up within, attended, and served such church-related institutions, I can certainly confirm, and have indeed experienced (!), much that is cited in the article.  I do, however, have two important concerns about the author’s stated assumptions about church vis-à-vis academy, which go to the often harmful (mis)perceptions of both. 
     First, the article includes several positive ways “in which community was fostered” at the author’s institution.  Unfortunately that fostering did not extend to clear guidelines and frank discussion regarding review process and expectations.  Had such been in place, including a serious annual review process, the individual whose plight is recounted in the article would have had the opportunity to gauge and improve performance and those colleagues variously supporting or inclined toward not supporting the candidate (perhaps for pernicious reasons, perhaps out of genuine concern and respect for the overall mission of institution) would have had the opportunity to voice their concerns.
     Second, and perhaps even more importantly, I am concerned by the author’s presumption that “church-related colleges are not the same as churches” because churches are defined by “the purest forms of community” while academic institutions must face such “pragmatic demands” as “the need to offer quality….”  Talk about damning with faint praise!  Churches are great communities, they’re just not built for, or particularly capable of, quality.
     The author sets up a false and harmful dichotomy.  Why?  Precisely because “pragmatic demands” are the stuff of community!  Successful churches, like successful institutions of most any kind, have in place the very kind of processes to support and promote effective leadership as are discussed above.  Without such, community can and will indeed break down—as it did at the institution described in the article.  “Compassionate Christianity” exercised in the name of community and leadership cannot and does not avoid clear expectations, goals, and frank discussion; it promotes them.  You don’t believe me?  Go read a parable. Or, visit a successful, quality church (of which there are many!).
     With prayers for strength, courage, quality and pragmatically demanding community life in and among our churches and church-related institutions…

In my previous entry I shared some reflections on a friend and colleague who died over the summer—Brevard Childs.  In this entry I want to reflect on the life and contributions of Letty Russell, another friend and colleague who also died a few months ago.

 The obituaries on Letty all noted that she was a feminist theologian, which is an honorable thing to be.  I think if I were writing the obituaries I would have said simply that she was a very good theologian.  She was a feminist, indeed, and a passionate one.  She was also a life long member of Reformed (Presbyterian and UCC) churches, and that perspective was also evident in her living and writing.  And she was deeply, persistently, naggingly committed to a more just and open church in a more just and open world.

 She was probably not the first theologian to find in the Hebrew term shalom the heart of what she thought of as God’s vision for the world.  But she centered on shalom more wholeheartedly than any other Christian I know.  She wrote on shalom, taught shalom and served as host at shalom meals.

 For her shalom meant not only “peace” but “wholeness” “justice” “equity.”

 Her vision of the church was of a community gathered around a round table, where everyone could see everyone else and where no one sat at the head of the table or at the foot.  I will however add that I noted that whenever the rest of us sat at a dinner table or a committee table or a classroom table with Letty, the table may have been round but we always knew who was really in charge.

 In addition to her strong stress on shalom she brought two major gifts to doing theology from a feminist perspective.

 For one thing she really was concerned for justice for people of all sorts and conditions.  Racial inequality and economic inequality annoyed her just as much as gender inequality.

 For another thing, annoyed as she could be at Christian tradition and critical as she could be of our canon, she was first and foremost a lover and interpreter of Scripture.

 Tuesday, at the memorial service in Letty’s honor, Professor Yolanda Smith danced a beautiful tribute to her life and ministry.  As she entered the sanctuary to dance her memorial to Letty, Yolanda held the Bible high.

 Letty was a remarkable woman.  Requiescat in shalom.

Raise your hand if you think the Church is obsessed with sex, and especially homosexuality. If you read the news reports with any regularity you might think there is absolutely nothing else worth discussing in the minds of church folks. Okay. I admit that’s a bit over the top; but not by far. Every other day there is a news report about some church fight over what to do with gay and lesbians Christians who might actually desire to serve the people of God in leadership. Last week it was the struggles of the Episcopal Church to carefully avoid a schism that would further the current bizarre situation of having a Nigerian bishop providing pastoral guidance for a congregation in the marshlands of South Carolina.
 
During the same week the Presbyterians were scrupulously interrogating candidates for ordinations to ensure compliance with ordination standards barring homosexual candidates. We are not alone – all the churches seem obsessed with the same subject – and last week the international community got involved when one of the world’s more despicable leaders spoke at Columbia. Of all the outrageous things he said, the one that seemed to create the most buzz had to do with … guess what … homosexuality, or the absence thereof.
 
What is the deal? Okay, I admit, it was a laughable moment but I wish the buzz were about some of his other not-so laughable moments that seriously threaten the planet, not to mention Israel and Jews everywhere.
 
While I respect the desire for high moral standards among clergy and hear the vigorous disagreement over what that means with regard to sexual orientation, I am certain there are more pressing matters that the people of God might attend to if we weren’t otherwise distracted by such scrupulously narrow attention to gay and lesbian Christians. Perhaps it is our unfailing ability to be distracted that allows us to avoid the disturbing realities of the world’s poor that are at our doorstep. Endless discussions over who to bar from serving the Church, quibbling over obscure biblical passages, demanding a righteousness among some that no one, other than Jesus could match, distracts serious attention to the fact that 6 million people are dying each year from preventable diseases malaria, tuberculosis and HIV. 
 
I think we should focus our attention on that fact alone just long enough for it to make us seriously uncomfortable. Do not reach for the remote control, don’t fast forward to the celebrity news or switch to the game. Let us simply sit with the fact that according to the best estimates of medical experts 6 million people, many of them children, will die from lack of vaccines for malaria, tuberculosis and HIV. Why? Because good vaccines to treat these diseases don’t even exist.
 
Do you think just maybe God would even be pleased  if we paid more attention to that problem than figuring out how many ways we can distract ourselves over sex?

During this summer two of my friends and colleagues died.  Each had made significant contributions to theological education and to the church.  In some ways their theological commitments were strikingly different, but they shared a fierce devotion to the Bible and an unshakeable conviction that scripture still speaks to contemporary people.  I want to write this month about Brevard Childs and next month about Letty Russell.

 Brevard Childs was an Old Testament scholar.  He began his career approaching biblical texts much as his contemporaries did—with a focus on a text’s original historical context.  But he also studied with Karl Barth, and under Barth’s influence he came to appreciate the ways in which the whole Bible is always greater than its parts and to believe that the power of scripture is not limited to the history behind scripture.

 Childs became the leading proponent of what came to be called a canonical approach to the Bible.  This strategy for biblical interpretation made two claims.  First, what scholars and preachers and all Christian readers are supposed to interpret is the biblical text in its canonical form—as the church has accepted and loved it.  He wasn’t nearly as interested in the sources behind Genesis as he was in Genesis itself and what counted for his reading of Matthew was not so much how Matthew used Mark or the elusive Q but how Matthew told the story in his own terms.

 The second claim was that we should read the whole canon as a series of text in a kind of ongoing conversation.  Childs’ commentary on Exodus was a stunning example of learning to read the Old Testament texts in conversation with other Old Testament texts and how to read Exodus in the light of its use in the New Testament.

 My suspicion is that his work will be seen more as a corrective to other movements in biblical studies than as a movement all by itself, but in the light of his work, all of us do stand corrected.

 What was clearest about Childs was that he was driven above all by theological interests.   Put more simply he was driven by his profound Christian faith.  Many of us would have disagreed with him about the scope of that faith—especially as it related to issues of social justice.  (He was in favor of social justice; he just wasn’t sure it was the subject for preaching or exegesis).  But what was clearest in his writing and his preaching and his argument and his prayers was the profound conviction that the God who is God is revealed in Jesus Christ and that scripture bears witness to that revelation.

 Requiescat in pacem.

We believe that everyone—political figure or commentator, citizen or alien, man or woman, black or white, conservative or radical—who at this particular time says that this people and this nation are in deep, perhaps irremediable political trouble, speaks the truth.
~ ~ Will D. Campbell and James Y. Holloway.

Some words come back with haunting relevance.  Back in the 1960s, these two southern churchmen, Will Campbell and James Y. Holloway, co-edited  the journal of the Committee of Southern Churchmen, called Katallegete Be Reconciled.  A collection of their essays from that journal was published in 1970 under the title, Up To Our Steeples in Politics (Paulist Press).  The words above led the essay from which the title of the book was drawn.  Wipf and Stock Publishers has recently re-released this book.  It’s eerily timely, but not for reasons a quick reading of this lead might have you believe.  For these writers go on to unsettle an easy take on their political assessment.

Stated simply, we believe that the fundamental crises in our land rise from the obsession with politics, the faith that the political order is the only source and authority from which we can and ought to seek relief from what ails us as a community and as individuals.  Because there is in our land no real challenge to these obsessions, we believe that our crises will deepen, perhaps even beyond a point of no return . . . (111)

In 1970, they were calling into question the “political messianism” of Christian liberals.  Nearly forty years later, it would seem that the Christian Right took the bait and have been for two decades the more successful purveyors of this apostasy—the belief that we are called to create via political action what the New Testament claims God has already accomplished for us in Christ:  reconciliation.  Liberals haven’t left it far behind, however, we’ve just been outflanked.  So Campbell’s and Holloway’s message goes both ways, trying to identify a error we share when we trust Ceasar over Christ, and confuse politics—a means for an end, which is justice—with the end itself.  Despite flowery theological or biblical rhetoric accompanying the political action of the church, to the extent that the church, conservative or liberal, trusts Ceasar to do its bidding it falls inside Caesar’s yoke.  “Surely our calling as Christians is not summed up by a vapid, pathetic and generally ineffective effort to inject morality and high-mindedness into political activity” (117).  Ouch.

And they go on:  “Is obedience to Christ exhausted by immersing oneself in Caesar’s definition of politics?  Is witness to Christ’s victory uniting all men [sic] best made by service to what Caesar judges as the urgent issues of our times?  Might it not be that Caesar himself is confused, or is lying?  There is evidence in the history of Western civilization to support both affirmations” (118).  1970 or today?

What if we worked as hard to change the subject as we work to sway opinion within the subjects we are handed by powers that use us more than hear us?  Now I realize that in asking that question I’m stretching credulity, for one of our most difficult challenges in the American church is deciding who, at the beginning and end of all of this, is us?  Are we Americans, Christians, Christian Americans, or American Christians?  Must we begin to think again about the difference, all the while admitting the confusion?  I believe so.  And Campbell and Holloway have a word worth remembering.

These two write in a great and too often ignored tradition of Christian anarchy, refusing to acknowledge any monopoly of means (economics, politics, schooling, development, relentless pursuit of happiness) over holy ends (commonwealth, peace, knowledge, justice, joy).  They would remind us that trusting techniques of human invention as primary vehicles for the divine will amounts to idolatry, and should be treated as such.

Are Campbell and Holloway calling for retreat?  Are we to hold ourselves up in Christian enclaves, depending on what the world can give us but not making any contribution toward the common good of those who don’t live with us in our enclave?  Not at all.  We are to engage, to wish peace upon the city and to work for it as best we can.  But we are not to trust it too much, or like it too much, or confine our desires to its standards too much, lest we begin to confuse it with our home. 

Campbell and Holloway are working within the kind of distinction Stanley Hauerwas so aptly described a few years later, the distinction between the church as a peculiar politics that gives witness by whatever means necessary to the justice that God has already accomplished in Christ (beyond and more powerful than economics and politics, and nonviolent all the down to its core in Christ), and a political church that seeks to produce something like justice within a polity gone wildly off kilter and irretrievably distant to the ways of God (bound to economics and politics as the primary tools of human freedom).  We are called to give witness to what we begin to see, that God has reconciled the world in Christ—that reconciled, we need no longer kill each other because we are afraid, or angry, or belittling, or prejudice.  We can live reconciled, even before our politics catch up, even before we agree, even before we approve of each other.  And by so doing, we will humble the political for the sake of new politics (God’s politics).

Within echoes of the New Testament, the church need not be chaplain to a reigning order—be it military/industrial, commercial, religious, political or economic; be it conservative, liberal, radical or moderate.  It may live within the reigning order wisely, using its goods for holy purpose, but it need not accept the empire’s logic.  It may sow seeds of a more fundamental dissent.  And it may both experience and put on display an alternative order, with changed subjects and holier objects. 

Have any churches tried?  Yes, indeed, in their own broken ways.  And those broken ways sow seeds of this Christian anarchy—humbling wealth, power, race, gender, ideologies, and other distinctions we hold so dear.  Imagining a new reality, already here.

    In a time in which the logic of the market carries over into religion as well as economics, religious leaders often feel pressure to tailor theology to meet the demands of the consumer-driven, spiritual marketplace. As a result, theological “hard truths” are often soft peddled, lest they adversely impact things like congregational harmony and church growth.

     A similar dynamic can be observed in the work of theologians and religious leaders committed to Christian ecumenism and interreligious dialogue. While the furthering of both these things is unquestionably important, there is, in each case, a temptation to play down the real differences that distinguish Christian denominations and religious traditions from one another in the interest of fostering unity among them.

      Pope Benedict XIV is one religious leader who refuses to succumb to such temptations. He frequently warns of a “dictatorship of relativism” infecting the church and has consistently used his papal platform to speak out against philosophical, theological, and cultural trends that promote tolerance and acceptance at the expense of the doctrinal integrity of the Roman Catholic tradition. “An ‘adult’ faith,” Benedict stated, “is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceit from truth.”

     The conviction that in Christ Christians encounter not just one truth among many, but the Truth with a capital T — and that this encounter is most authentic when conducted within the confines of the Roman Catholic church — together constitute the animating core of Benedict’s theological perspective. Critics have contended, however, that unlike his predecessor, John Paul II, Benedict lacks a diplomat’s ability to present this perspective in ways that enable productive exchanges with non-Roman Catholics — one of the achievements of the Second Vatican Council, for instance. Exhibit A for Benedict’s detractors in this regard was the controversial address he gave before an audience at the University of Regensburg in Germany on September 12, 2006, in which his quoting of a 14th century Byzantine emperor’s negative remarks about Islam drew worldwide, and even violent, protests from Muslims.

     Exhibit B may now be the document issued by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) on July 10, entitled Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church. This document has generated controversy among both a number of Protestant and Eastern Orthodox church leaders and liberal and ecumenically minded Roman Catholics for its bold assertion of the Roman Catholic church’s superior capacity to facilitate the human encounter with God through the person of Jesus Christ.

     Eastern Orthodox and Protestant Christianity, the document states, suffer from “defects” due to the fact that they are not in full communion with Rome. And while the document does extend the title of “Church” to Eastern Orthodox communities of faith, the same courtesy is not extended to the churches of the Reformation which, having supposedly broken the line of apostolic succession in the 16th century, are referred to as “ecclesial communities.”

     The decision to use the term “ecclesial communities” rather than “churches” when discussing Protestantism is theologically significant. “Church” in the New Testament connotes that community against which Jesus, in Matthew 16:18, says not even “the gates of Hades will prevail.” It also stands for that special collection of persons whom Christ nourishes and tenderly cares for as members of his own body (Ephesians 5:29-30). To be denied the title “Church,” then, is no small matter: If Benedict and the authors of Responses are correct in their determination that what Protestants belong to is not properly called “Church,” then Protestants should be concerned –– very concerned –– about where it is that they stand vis-à-vis Christ.

     As one who has experienced Christ’s justifying grace and the fullness of inclusion into the Church by way of Protestant churches, I know, however, that Responses is wrong to deny that Protestants participate in anything less than the “Church” when they gather to give thanks for what God has done in and for the world through the person of Jesus Christ.

     A service Responses does provide to Protestant Christians and, more importantly, to the Church universal is its ability to clarify the terms of an important dispute regarding the nature of the relationship between the Church and the dynamic presence of God in the world that is the Holy Spirit.

     That debate, simply stated, amounts to this: Is it the case that the Holy Spirit conforms itself to that space provided for it by the earthly, visible Church, or is it rather this Church that must permit its scope and location to be determined for it by the agency of the Spirit? When reading Responses one gets the sense that it is the former. When reading the central documents of the 16th century Reformation, however, as well as those of the Second Vatican Council, the latter, in contrast, is assumed.

     I have a hunch that the most significant, yet unacknowledged, division within Christianity may not be between Roman Catholics and Protestants, fundamentalists and modernists, or even pro-gay and anti-gay Christians. Instead, I suspect it may be between those who believe that the Holy Spirit must set up shop where the Church allows it to and those who believe the Church must follow the Spirit’s lead when determining where its boundaries begin and end.

     Should we seek to discover the theological roots that lead to many of the internal conflicts facing the Church at present — including everything from Christianity’s relationship to the other world religions and the extent to which gay and lesbian Christians should enjoy full inclusion into the Church — one will most likely find that they can be traced back to the Church’s failure to come to a consensus on the nature of its relationship to the Holy Spirit.

     And until this fundamental issue is addressed, Christians will continue to spend lots of time and energy dealing with symptoms rather than root causes.

One of the new things in my life is books-on-tape, After the first four or five months of one and two hour drives – a necessary part of my new ministry as a presbytery executive - I decided I needed to figure out a way to stay alert. And so I went to the new Ossining Library and borrowed several sets of discs. What a wonderful addition it has been to my life – giving me lots to think about – and not all of it presbytery related!

Recently I have been listening to Team of Rivals (all 36 discs!) – Doris Kearns Goodwin’s riveting account of Abraham Lincoln’s rise to the presidency and the tumultuous years of the Civil War. In the process, I have learned more about leadership than any of the dozen “churchy” books I have read. There are too many lessons for me to recount here, but a few ideas have helped me re-think clergy and lay leadership in the church:

1) Love your enemies – and make them part of your Cabinet! The very title of Goodwin’s book is an oxymoron - how can rivals form a cohesive and creative team? But that is exactly what Lincoln did – intentionally and decisively. He made sure that the other three men who had contended for the Republican nomination, and lost, were the first people he invited into his leadership team – into the key positions of Secretary of State (Seward), Secretary of the Treasury (Chase), and Attorney General (Bates). As a non-anxious, non-reactive presence, Lincoln didn’t care if these leaders agreed with him – as long as they all worked together for the common good. And by harnessing their potentially negative energy for the good, he recognized them, while containing them all at the same time. As a result, he obtained the absolute best leadership to help lead the nation.

How frequently do pastors or elders INTENTIONALLY ask people who disagree with us to join our team?

2) Head and heart synergy defines good leadership. I have been struck - in listening to the words of politicians and national leaders from the 19th century - by the deep passion and feeling evident in all their writing and speaking. The men – as well as their wives – express extremes of joy and grief, anger and anxiety as they reflect on the life of the nation – and yet their intelligent and complex analysis of events and ideas puts our current political commentary to shame. Again and again, Goodwin recounts Lincoln’s laughter, his  tears, his pure joy in story and family and friends – all enjoyed daily – even as he struggled with the dangers and complexities of the war. Lincoln understood the Great Commandment – that we can truly love God and neighbor only if we use our head heart and our heart – as well as our body and our soul.

How many church fights spin out of control because we are either overly emotional – or stuck in the rational rigidity of doctrine and tradition?

3) A strong leader engages in careful collaboration and discernment, but also knows when decisive action is necessary. In my 32 years of ministry I have been caught in the crosswind between competing leadership schools – 1) those that say a pastor is called to empower and enable other leaders through listening and collaboration – and then get out of the way and let the body decide.; and 2) the decisive leader school – a leader must lead -  making the tough decisions and then bringing the congregation along. Abraham Lincoln was a both/and kind of man – patiently asking for, and listening to, the opinions of his Cabinet and his wife and the leaders in Congress – often allowing consensus to arise. But in critical moments, when his heart and intuition told him otherwise, he would make a decision counter to the advice he was given – and most often it paid off for the well being of the country.  His combination of collegiality and courage offered to this country perhaps the wisest presidential leadership we have ever had.

When do Sessions and pastors refuse to make tough decisions, because they are afraid of conflict. But, when is collaboration and conversation absolutely necessary to build ownership and enthusiasm about a common vision? It is often a tough call.

4) Servant leadership does not blame others.  Lincoln took the blame for mistakes and failures – even if they were not his own. In some sense, he knew that they were all in the mess together. Though he challenged his Cabinet and pushed his military commanders and was very direct and honest when he disagreed or was disappointed in some action, he knew that to blame others in order to get himself off the hook was not conducive to building a team.  And on several occasions he took the blame for something that someone else had done in order to spare that man public humiliation.

How often do we church leaders fall into the blame game, refusing to understand that when part of the body suffers or fails or disappoints, we all suffer and fail and are disappointed?

5) Strong leadership is grounded in the power and wisdom of God – the One who leads us in strength and intelligence, grace and creativity.  Lincoln was often found with his Bible at hand, reading late into the night, or praying on his knees. And he worshiped almost every Sunday at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC. He never joined the church – because in many ways he was adverse to dogmatic and superstitious ideas. But he never doubted the providence and will of God, or the universal values of dignity and freedom and service that he understood God intended for all humankind. Yes, Lincoln remained humble and empowered by immersing himself in the disciplines and the mysteries of the spiritual life.

How often do our leadership struggles in the church ignore the teachings and values of scripture – and separate us from the promise of worship and the power of prayer?

In the 1980’s I read James McGregor Burns’ classic book entitled Leadership – based on his analysis of the Kennedy years (well, I didn’t read ALL of it – 600+ pages!) His concept of “transformational leadership” versus “transactional analysis” has stayed with me ever since. A transactional leader gives in order to get - I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. But a transformational leader leads – taking risks and sharing dreams in order to invite people into a stronger, bigger, purer, more ethical place. Or to put it theologically, a transformational leader - honoring and sensing the image of God in himself/herself - leads others to fully express the image of God in themselves and in all of God’s children who share this world. Next to Jesus, Abraham Lincoln was one of the most inspirational transformational leaders who ever graced this earth.

May we learn form him and lead like him – for the sake of the church we love and serve.