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!

This is the third blog in a series I’ve called “Being church”. In this series I’ve tried to describe how church is actually a verb. When Christians gather together, we are not ‘church’ because we call ourselves a church or because we belong to a congregation or because we built a nice building with a steeple. We become church when we gather and live together in Christ-likeness. We become church as we bear-forth or incarnate the life and ministry of Jesus the Christ.

I’ll have more to say about what it means to be church in the next blog, but now I would like to move on to a description of a community in whom I experienced Christ and the Christian life more intensely, more intentionally, than anywhere else. Note especially how the Bishram community is made up of oppressed people who are reaching out to others who are oppressed. They sustain their communal life through fellowship, sharing whatever they have in common, giving to those who have need, reaching out to those beyond their community, and also through much prayer and study.

My encounter with Bishram Ministries in Nepal began vicariously a few years ago. My sister Patti had visited Nepal on a mission trip, worked with Sister Asangla and Pastor Dan of Bishram Ministries. She returned aglow with the radiant enthusiasm of a new convert. As she told me of their evangelistic ministry in Nepal, I tried to be an attentive brother to her, but truth be known I was rather dismissive of the whole thing. For one thing, Nepal is pretty far away from my daily concerns in Kansas City. And another, Patti and I are on different ends of the theological spectrum, and I was not too interested in her “brand” of evangelism. Proselytizing Hindus and Buddhists and converting them to Christianity is out of my spiritual comfort zone. Over the years, as she repeatedly asked me to travel with her to see Bishram ministry for myself, I politely but resolutely refused. After a while, however, my excuses were running out (especially since I was going to be on sabbatical for a year) and I finally said to her that I would need to hear about the ministry from someone more…well…more academically legitimate. Immediately, she replied that “Billy” “who taught somewhere in Dallas” could tell me about it. Well, the name “Billy” did not strike me as very authoritative, but I reluctantly agreed. Shortly, I received an email from Patti that was in effect a virtual handshake between “Billy” and myself. When I inspected the name on the email, it was none other than the respected theologian, William Abraham. Now, she had my attention.

Soon, Billy and I had a conversation about Bishram, and he convinced me that for many reasons I needed to go. So, I did in January 2008. And the rest of this story is about my experience of an amazing community that is the closest approximation of the early church in Acts chapter 2 that I have ever encountered. Do I now sound like a convert?

If I was going to go halfway around the world, I didn’t want to be just a spectator, so I offered to teach and preach as it would be useful to them. It was arranged for me to teach students in their school of ministry, to teach church leaders in a village, and then to preach whenever needed. I would arrive on Saturday, have Sunday to relax and recover from travel, then start teaching in the school of ministry on Monday. Patti would join us the following Thursday. Then we would travel to western Nepal so that Patti and I could teach in a 2 day conference.

Nepal is a study in stark contrasts. Fertile valleys and rich, biodiverse jungles stretch out  between majestic peaks of the Himalayan range. Nepal is an ancient civilization and slowly making its way into the 21st Century. With 80% of Nepali people being Hindu, Nepal is the only official Hindu state in the world. 10% are Buddhist; 4% are Muslim; and Christians are lumped in the “other” category with less than 1%.

Nepali culture is as beautiful and attractive as the awe-inspiring natural environment. The people are gentle, friendly, and family-oriented. Everywhere you see people walking arm in arm, talking freely, smiling and laughing easily. Their hospitality is legendary; as a culture, they give freely of whatever they have.

However, Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world that faces seemingly intractable obstacles. Their government is nearly incapacitated by incompetence, political infighting, insurgencies, and corruption. Fuel is scarce and only intermittently available. Electricity is on for a maximum of 16 hours a day. Maoist and Tarai factions extort money from people and businesses on a regular basis, and their political rallies can shut down whole sectors of the country. Nepali culture is highly stratified by a complicated and rigid caste system and an absolute hierarchy of men over women.

Sister Asangla, her family, and everyone in Bishram ministry were the Christian incarnation of that Nepali graciousness, attending to my every need. Without exaggeration, without hyperbole, the community of Bishram ministry is a communion that challenges what we have come to call “church” here in the US. Their faith is born and sustained in struggle, in lack, in suffering. They experience and witness to God’s miraculous and transformative power in very real and tangible ways. To be with them – even for a short while – is to be convicted of my (our) idolatrous need for material goods and financial security. They give sacrificially; whereas, for the most part we give out of our surplus. The grace by which they live day to day amidst hardship exposes the materialistic poverty of our faith. As I returned to the US, I left convicted of my many spiritual limitations.

What exactly is Bishram Ministries? I must confess it took me a while to understand it, to get the whole picture. Structurally, Bishram is centered in Kathmandu, the capitol city of about 800,000, and is founded and led by Sister Asangla and Pastor Dan, both of whom were working in different churches prior to founding Bishram in 2001. Their mission was to form disciples in a transformative community that is always in mission. As I have said, Nepali society is highly stratified between classes and genders. Sister Asangla and Pastor Dan (of Brahmin lineage) joined together to create a biblical community where there is no division in Christ, and that is exactly what they are doing. As I experienced their communal life in the school of ministry and during the conference, I saw men serving and women leading, and people from all castes joined together in a common life. What the Spirit has done through them is to transform small bits of Nepali society into egalitarian communions that aim to accept, nurture, and disciple each person in the community. It is truly humbling and inspiring to experience such a transformative communion, in which people’s lives are radically changed and through which the community becomes a ‘city on a hill’ that itself proclaims the gospel by the sacrificial love of one for another (John 17:21).

Right now, the central community in which Sister Asangla and Pastor Dan are the leaders is the mother church of a loosely structured Bishram organization. There are other smaller congregations in the Kathmandu area, and still more church communities that have been founded in villages and towns across Nepal. Over the few years since the founding of Bishram, the Bishram mother church has prepared and sent ministers to start new Christian communities, and these become ‘daughter’ churches. These daughter churches range from very small in number to 150 or so believers. Each of the congregations are unique, for each is a manifestation of the indigenous culture of their specific context. This is to say that Bishram does not try to duplicate itself; it doesn’t franchise itself. Rather, their intention is for the gospel to be planted within a particular community and for the church to emerge organically as a Christian incarnation of that culture.

The Bishram mother church is the hub of several important ministries. First, there is the school for ministry that Brother Temjen, Asangla’s very capable brother, directs. This is primarily a residential school that trains people to be leaders in existing churches or to start church communities in other areas. People who have the potential and the drive to serve the church in leadership are sent to live in the school for 2 – 3 years. Of course, these students are poor and have no livelihood while they are in school, so they must depend upon Bishram ministries to support them for all of their needs.

The school has an academic curriculum that itself is challenging and transformative for the students, many of whom have only minimum education when they arrive and very little if any theological training. But the school is a community in and of itself in which the students learn a very different, and more communal, way of life. They live together and share just about everything in common. They unlearn the oppressive divisions of caste and gender. They practice spiritual disciplines of study, prayer, and mission. Words fail to convey the intensity and transformative power of the school of ministry. I’ve seen the lives that have been radically changed: a drug addict who writes and performs Christian music that is used in many of the churches, an untouchable woman (the lowest caste) who has become a leader and teacher in a church. These are only two of many whose lives have been radically reoriented and redeemed, whose gifts and talents are now contributing to the church’s life and mission.

The school for ministry is like the heart of the Bishram organization for it takes in those whose lives seem to be depleted and used up. The school involves them in a redemptive community in which they discover their gifts and are given the skills to use their gifts effectively. They are equipped and sent out into the body of Christ to build it up, to edify it, to renew it.

A second focus of Bishram ministries is to administrate and develop the network of churches. Sister Asangla and Pastor Dan are in regular communication with the pastors and leaders of their daughter churches, in order to train them and to support them in any way they can. Bishram has developed a creative network of teachers who travel among Bishram churches and other churches to teach and encourage the people in their faith and daily life. Most of these pastors need supplemental income to survive, and the mother church supports them as much as possible. However, funds are very tight as you might imagine, so pastors and church planters have to be self-reliant as well.

Bishram has always been concerned with not only the spiritual but the material needs of people. The third aspect of their ministry is to cultivate external relations (e.g., other ministry organizations) to bring in medical missions and job training, for example.

These three forms of ministry are all evangelistic and missional; they are means of spreading and incarnating the Word of God. Because it is illegal to proselytize and to evangelize through mass media, the primary way that people hear the Word of God is for Christians to witness to them, personally, by word of mouth. So, the believers in Bishram churches share their faith, they share their experiences of God’s transforming power, they talk about the new way of life they find in Christ, and they invite others to experience it for themselves in worship services and bible studies. In this respect, each believer is cultivated to become an evangelist.

Bishram churches are like congregations, but I hesitate to call them congregations because to American ears that word may give a wrong impression. In America we have so compartmentalized our lives that we tend to think of congregations as institutions that exist side-by-side with other institutions and to which we dedicate part of our time. Because daily life is very difficult in Nepal, and Christianity is a very small minority, I cannot stress enough the life-giving nature of their Christian community, a communion in which they share a common life and share one another’s burdens, and lift each other up in love. Of course, there are degrees of involvement among the ‘believers’ and others who attend (they emphasize belief and discipleship rather than ‘membership’).

But it is important to get a sense for the intense and sustained life these people share with each other throughout the week. Obtaining basic necessities is a daily struggle, and most people endure great hardship and suffering. Because of grossly inadequate sanitary conditions, many are quite ill. There is an interdependence in the Bishram community that most Americans can scarcely imagine: they depend upon one another for their very lives. They are in small groups together and talking to one another throughout the week. In many respects, the Bishram churches are their life. For those who have converted from other religions and have been shunned by their families, the Bishram community has become their closest family and provides a life-line of survival.

Ok, I am a convert. This is the real deal. I have never encountered a Christian community that so closely approximates Acts chapter 2, in which an oppressed community gathers daily to break bread, shares their possessions, studies and prays, ministers in the marketplace, and rejoices in the gracious love of God who does great and awesome things among them. My experience with Bishram has profoundly affected me; I have returned a better disciple of Christ.

In the next blog, I will try to draw these three examples together and come up with some principles for what the church is and how we can be more fully the church.

I frequently mutter about writing outraged letters to the media but seldom do anything about it.  However after the Democratic debate in Pennsylvania on ABC I not only sent off an immediate e-mail I signed an angry petition the next day, and if anybody had sent me more petitions, I would have signed them, too.

The most blatantly annoying tactic employed by Messrs. Gibson and Stephanopolos was to focus the first sixty per cent of the debate on questions loosely focused on niceness and electability.  The nation is in crisis and we’re trying to figure out whether Senator Clinton really ducked sniper fire or whether Senator Obama not only was in the same room with Professor Ayers but, God forbid, might have said something to him.

But of course as a clergyperson I saved my greatest annoyance for the questions and comments on Jeremiah Wright, having long since noticed that the mainstream media are blithely clueless about 1)church; 2)rhetoric; and 3)prophetic ministry.  (Tell me, Amos, what do you mean when you say “God will get Judah?”)

And what moved me from annoyance to something approaching fury was Stephanopolos’ question to Senator Obama: “Does Rev. Wright love America as much as you?”

First, what kind of a question is that?  I’ve spent some time visiting Chinese churches and the great divide between the acceptable and the marginalized churches is: “How much do these congregations and their leaders love China?”  Is that our model for religious life in America?  When I was very young the FBI showed up to hear my father preach because someone wondered whether he loved America as much as say, Joe McCarthy did.

Second, why would anyone think that was a question Mr. Obama should answer?  I very much do not want my parishioners or my students (or my family) to make public pronouncements on how much I do or do not love America.

And third, since the Rev. Mr. Wright gave six years of his life to serving in the Armed Services while Mr. Stephanopolos and I had other agendas, I found myself wondering:  “Who the hell does he think he is to ask?”

That’s what I found myself wondering.

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.

A few weeks ago I spent a few minutes reading yet another review of the recent works of the evangelical atheists—Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens.  Now I have not read any of the books being reviewed, though I’ve read essays by each of those authors.

My general sense was that their image of the way in which people decide for or against religious faith is this: the seeker sits in a den or study with paper and pad.  In the left hand column he or she totes up the reasons for religious belief (a short list indeed); in the right hand column he or she jots down the reasons against it (along and impressive list).  Being totally dispassionate and rational, the seeker becomes a non-believer and lives happily, or at least rationally, ever after.

That afternoon I went to a women’s prison in our town to teach a Bible study.  We were talking about the raising of Lazarus (talk about irrational), and when the women talked they did not talk about evidence or rational decision making.

They talked about how faith made it possible to get through incredibly difficult lives. 
They talked about the social structure that the prison’s chapel services and Bible study provided. They talked about how they counted on church to provide the context that would help them make it when they returned to the larger world. They talked about forgiveness.  How they knew it.  How they shared it.

There are interesting intellectual arguments to be made for or against any particular set of religious beliefs.  (Arguments against religion in general are usually just bizarre.)  But what the gang of three seems to miss is the sheer social thickness of the faithful life.  Faith is who people are, not just what people believe.

To miss that is pretty much to miss the point.

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 is a complicated week in the life of the church.  A Holy Week, but a week that involves many things, with many mixed emotions. 
 
There’s the excitement of Palm Sunday.  Jesus enters Jerusalem and crowds gather to welcome him, to put down their cloaks, to shout hosanna, blessed is he!  But even that excitement is tempered with irony.  The crowds shout hosanna and call Jesus their king.  A few days later that title will come back at Jesus when the prosecuting Roman governor asks, “are you the king of the Jews?”  These adoring crowds will, in a few, short days, change their cries to that of “crucify him!”  The excitement of Palm Sunday turns to the anguish of betrayal on Maundy Thursday.  It moves to the deep grief of death on Good Friday and the loss of hope on Saturday.  Then, however, on Sunday, there is the empty tomb.  There is the resurrection, the assurance of new life.  There is victory over death; there is restoration of hope.  This week is a collision of religious expression and a collision of emotions.
 
Perhaps this collision is exactly where we need to be.  Rather than staying in the triumphal entry, rather than to moving on to the passion and depths of Jesus’s suffering, rather than skipping right ahead to the joy of Easter, perhaps we need to stay in the confusion of all these things happening simultaneously.  Rather than wrapping things up nicely and neatly, we stay right here, in the collision of joy, pain, suffering and anticipation.  We stay right here in the collisions and complications and learn how to cope with them. 
 
Because life is this way.  It isn’t black and white.  It is shades of gray.
 
Sending your child off to the bus stop for the first day of school isn’t black and white.  It’s an exciting milestone.  Yet it is scary to let go and trust that he can cope with school.  There’s pride in watching that little person step out on her own.  Yet it is painful to recognize that she can be part of the world without you.  It’s shades of gray.
 
Faith is this way too.  The Christian faith is a story of complications and collisions.  The last shall be first and the first shall be last.  Anyone who will lose their life shall save it.  We are simultaneously sinners and set free from our sin.  God is great and God is humble.  The kingdom is now and the kingdom is yet to come.  Absolutes are not what we’re after.  Experiences of love and grace are.  And neither of those is clear-cut. 
 
Love can mean saying no to a child.  Love can mean setting boundaries and expectations for the people who ask the church for financial assistance.  Love can mean turning off life support.  Love is a messiah entering Jerusalem on a stolen colt.
 
Grace is an empty tomb.  Grace is a crucifixion.  Grace is a lamb sitting on the monarch’s throne.   
 
Delving into these collisions of emotion, we begin to see that what is complicated and complex can be broken down into smaller parts and named.  Finally, in that delving and naming we arrive at what is most true, most sincere in our experience and being.  It is not black and white.  It is the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark. 1:1).

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!

Last week, the session at my Church had the privilege of examining a young woman who was seeking our endorsement for Inquirer status within the Presbytery.  While some may see this as a burdensome requirement of Presbyterian polity, I like to think of it as one of the great privileges of the call process, for both the individual pursuing ordination as well as the Church offering its endorsement.  For the Church it is an occasion for celebration – one of your own is beginning an important journey of discernment as to the shape of the calling God has placed on her life.  For the individual, with any confidence in the connection between yourself and the Church of your membership, this is perhaps the place where you can be the most honest with yourself and with others concerning the state of your readiness for ministry.  After the Session comes the seminaries and the divinity schools who will put a grade on your best efforts at ministry and theological articulation, not to mention the Presbytery Committees who will read your initial attempts at sermon-writing and your earliest constructions of a faith statement and offer their critical feedback.  All of this is important and helpful, but it is also frightening and intimidating, which gives the home Church an opportunity to be a place of grace for inquirers and candidates for ministry.

The young woman we briefly examined and happily endorsed for Inquirer status took avail of such grace in her paperwork, particularly when she confessed “I am a work in progress.  I am a student – still exploring, still learning about God, about myself, about the world around me, and the relationships between each of these.”  I was glad that the Church could be a place where she could feel comfortable expressing her incompleteness as a disciple.  I should like to believe that we all could identify with that feeling, even if we count our time in the ministry by decades rather than years.  As I imagine this young woman’s journey ahead, I know she will meet those who will encourage that sense of humility just as surely as she will meet those who will make her feel inadequate for it and for every tiny misstep she might make as she learns about her place in this strange and God-given calling.

I am reminded of a time when I was exploring my own call to ministry.  My story is one of constantly pushing myself into new arenas of ministry as a challenge, which was in a sense my own way of asking for an endorsement of what I took to be a call to ministry.  Through my college years, I challenged my call by applying for internships at churches in places wholly unfamiliar to me.  I worked in Chattanooga, TN, I worked in Allentown, PA…all the while seeking validation of my call to ministry.  One summer, this North Carolina native decided to really step out and apply for a youth-ministry internship in Colorado.  I remember filling out the unusually large application and wondering at the scope of the questions they were asking.  The one question that still persists in my memory today went something like this: “Describe briefly your beliefs about God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, Sin, Forgiveness, the Church, and the resurrection of the dead.” 

I don’t remember what I wrote in response to that question, nor do I remember what I wrote for the other eight essays, but what I do remember as a young man of 20 years old is the phone call I received declining my application.  I remember with clarity how the pastor at this Church hastily explained that the beliefs I expressed did not line up well with those of the Church.  I was too young to recognize it at the time, but I had just been subjected to my first litmus test, and I was found lacking. 

Since that time, I have had the burden of having to choose one applicant over another for a sought after opportunity and so I understand the need for criteria, but it seems strange to me that my best attempts at articulating my beliefs at the age of 20 became the reason why I was not chosen.  While I was disappointed at the time for missing out on what was to me another chance to test my call to ministry, ten years later I am a bit disappointed that this Church used an unspecified orthodoxy to separate the wheat from the chaff.  I am disappointed that this Church would not let itself be a place for shaping the “work-in-progress” that I was at the time, and that I continue to be.

I am reminded of a certain disciple of Jesus who, in the days after the resurrection, heard a crazy report from his fellow disciples that the Lord had risen.  In response to this unbelievable news, he said “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”  These words earned him the title of “Doubting Thomas,” which may carry some measure of judgment in it, but it seems to me that Jesus does not judge Thomas.  A week later, Jesus comes to Thomas and gives him exactly what he needed in order to believe.  Jesus tells him “Put your finger here; see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it into my side.  Stop doubting and believe.”  Jesus does not strip Thomas of his disciple status, but rather treats him like the work-in-progress that he was, still seeing the faithful disciple that he would be one day.  Jesus does what it takes in order to form faith within Thomas.

Young adults are supposed to doubt…it is developmentally appropriate for them to do so.  Young adults are works-in-progress, and if we’re honest with ourselves, no matter what age we are and no matter how long we’ve been in the Church, we are all works-in-progress – mixtures of deep faith as well as doubt.  I wonder if the Church might take a clue from Jesus, though, and stop treating one another with the expectation that we should have faith all figured out by the end of adolescence.  I wonder if, instead, we might own the fact that we are all works-in-progress, and expect that Jesus would work with us and through us to form faith within the most doubtful of individuals. 

Having recently been ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), I pay attention at Presbytery meetings when new ministers are being questioned for ordination or transfer. Two confessions about my attentiveness:  

1. I’m glad it is them and not me up there. It’s intense. 
2. Code words from the new minister’s statement of faith jump off the page when I
read, especially in the Scripture section. words like inerrant and infallible.
The question that comes on the floor of Presbytery about the authority of scripture is not often asked as an authentic theological question, but more of a litmus test. Sadly, scripture’s authority has been an issue that has driven the church into camps. And both camps are guilty of the division.

Last week I read a piece by Walter Brueggemann that helped me reframe this issue. The authority of scripture is not about science and history and certitude. No, Brueggemann claims it is about the authorizing voice of Scripture, and how it empowers communities to live and hope and act in new and transforming ways. Whose is that authorizing voice other than God, the one revealed in the text? I’m left wondering what the difference is between scripture being authoritative and scripture being revelatory.

All Presbyterian elders, deacons, ministers of Word and Sacrament are asked if they believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s Word to them. It is a deeply serious question. Even the language of this question, it seems to me, points to revelation. The Scriptures are an authoritative witness—they point to and testify about and reveal Jesus Christ.

This Presbyterian does not believe in the Bible, but she does believe in God.
I believe in God who has been revealed to me through the words and narratives and miracles and convictions of the Old and New Testaments. I believe in God whose voice summons me to the work of justice and care, to the labor of love and peace.

I recently met with three siblings who lost their mom. Reminiscing over her 90 plus years, they told stories of cardboard dollhouses, cub scouts, and a mother’s love that flowed in and around every corner. They went on to tell me that their mom had started working later in life for a Homes Association. That Association, put together years before civil rights, had bylaws that prohibited African-Americans from renting or owning homes. So this gentle white haired employee took her hand to the White Out. She obliterated any sign of printed discrimination on the documents she sent to new homeowners and tenants. Where did she learn such boldness in the face of bigotry?

Someone was revealed to this woman.  A Holy One. One who spoke through ancient words like, “blessed are the peacemakers” and who was revealed in ancient words like “there is no Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you all are one in Christ Jesus.” And isn’t this what we want Scripture to do?  To reveal and to empower?

Brueggemann goes on to say Scripture is “infallible” in the sense that it authorizes a way of living and believing that without fail leads us to the work of peace and kindness, self-control and joy. So, perhaps next time I’m reading a statement of faith or hearing the litmus test being administered on Presbytery floor, I will resist the camp mentality. I pray that I will trust that, like me, my brothers and sisters have experienced God being revealed to them in the book—in the text, which is enough for life. The Bible tells me so.

When I first moved from Egypt to the US in the summer of 2000, my then-husband – an American from whom I am now divorced – offered to drive me to the neighborhood mosque. He had looked it up so that he could take me there when I arrived in Seattle.

As we approached the mosque, I saw a man coming out who looked as if he’d been lifted from Saudi Arabia, where I lived for many years as a young adult. He was wearing a turban and a white robe and had a huge beard. He represented the most conservative elements of my religion and I wanted nothing to do with him or the mosque. I told my husband to keep driving.

I vowed there and then that I would not join any Muslim community in the US but would find my own way as a Muslim in my new home. I maintained that vow during my time in Seattle.

After I signed my divorce papers, I was offered a job in New York City. I’d been to NYC several times before and always loved it – its energy, the crowds, the non-stop pace, and even the noise. I’m from Cairo, Egypt, one of the largest and most crowded cities in the world and for me, NYC is Cairo right here in the US!

I didn’t want to get on a plane and start a new life six hours later so I decided to drive from Seattle to NYC. I took 18 days to drive across the country, stopping at places I wanted to visit and in cities where I had arranged to meet an old friend and two new ones. My road trip began on Nov. 1, 2002, just over a year after the terrible attacks on Sept. 1, 2001.

It was a time of increasing suspicion of Muslims and all things Islamic. Getting into my car and driving alone through the US was my way of introducing my fear of those suspicions to the paranoia that Americans.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my road trip was also taking me to a community I had been determined not to find in Seattle.

They say it’s not about the journey but the destination but it was about both for me. While the journey was indeed my quest to find my own way in my new home country, the destination was of utmost importance not just because NYC is still my home city but because it also turned out to be the home of a community of Muslims I never thought I’d find.

Looking back, I see a pattern I never noticed before. I see now that my arrival at each of the cities I’ve lived in during my life has heralded a new stage in my faith.

I became a feminist in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia when I realized that the Islam we practiced at home was so different from the Islam outside of my home and which so often discriminated against women and denied them their rights. I became a liberal Muslim in Jerusalem where I lived in 1998 and where my ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbors reminded me of the ultra-conservative Muslims in Saudi Arabia. Seeing the impact that such orthodoxy has on religion, again particularly on women, I was able to start a journey towards liberal Islam that my road trip to NYC completed.

Soon after I arrived in NYC on Nov. 18, 2002, I came across the liberal Muslim website www.MuslimWakeUp.com and made friends with the founder of the site, Ahmed Nassef, and Patricia Dunn, the site’s current managing editor.

Through them and the website, I discovered a community of like-minded liberal and progressive Muslims which I happily joined. For the first time in my life, I felt comfortable sharing my ideas and values as a liberal Muslim.

I’m so glad I drove past that mosque in Seattle and all the way to NYC.

Just last week, I returned from a 3 week trip to Nepal. Yes, that Nepal, one of the poorest countries in the world, sandwiched between India and China, split from its spiritual cousin, Tibet, by the towering majesty of Mount Everest and the rest of the Himalayan range. If you have perused the “World” section in the New York Times last week, you will have seen that Nepal is convulsing with political unrest as violent protests erupted in the capital, Kathmandu.

The trip was very difficult in many ways, but it was also one of the most inspirational of my life. I went to teach in a Christian church and school for ministry (Bishram Ministries) that was founded only 7 years ago. I’ll have more to say about that in a later blog, but as I reflected on my experiences with that wonderful and amazing community, I realized that I was returning a very different person. For you see, the ministry I visited in Nepal was the closest I’ve ever come to experiencing the church as described in Acts 1-4. Now, I realize that there are problems and conflicts in every community, even in the early church (remember that Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead in Acts 5; so much for spiritual harmony in the church!), but the Bishram community is the most vivid example I’ve encountered of a people in communion, giving their all, and transforming their world.

My experience in Nepal brought to mind other experiences I’ve had of church,
    of church as a verb,
           of being church,
                 of church as a sacrificial and shared life in Christ.

So in this and the next 2 blogs, I’ll talk about 3 experiences of being church in ways that are somewhat different from traditional, congregational life. Perhaps these reflections will help you recall your own experiences of spiritual vitality and challenge that you might not have associated with being church. And then perhaps, just perhaps, we can bring those experiences into our congregations, and shake up the usual suspects and usual practices and allow God to do a new thing among us.

1. Being Church as Doubting Believers

For just over a year I have been acting as the leader of a small covenant discipleship group. But it is a rather odd assortment of folks; they are not the usual suspects. When I think of the kinds of people who would gravitate toward one of these intimate settings of spiritual formation, I imagine that they are ardent believers who are looking for just a little deeper walk with God.

But in this group, it is safe to say only one person in our group might qualify, just barely, for the “ardent believer” type. The rest of them are struggling more with doubt than resting firmly in faith. These are people who are active in an urban congregation but who don’t feel all that spiritual. They want to believe, but the theology of their church doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to them. They believe in God but their concept of God is vague and it is difficult for them to talk about. They don’t know what to do with Jesus, especially the claim about his divinity. Forget the Holy Spirit; it’s just too spooky. When it comes time to pray, they don’t know how or even why to do it. Reciting the Apostle’s Creed makes them feel like they are lying or just going through the motions. For the most part, these folks are drawn to the moral and political mission of this congregation.  The greatest common denominator among this group is their passionate commitment to social justice, their love for one another, and the fact that they are all leaders in the congregation.

You might wonder: what in the world is this group of agnostics doing in the church, and how did they get to be LEADERS in the church? I don’t know. But the surprising thing to me is that when I get together with them for conversation, meditation, and study, I feel like I’m in church; that we are doing church. I feel that our gathering is more like church than anything else I do during the week – and I’m a seminary professor, ordained, and a regular participant in a congregation!

Before I came to Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, I taught for 6 years at Yale Divinity School, where the student body was quite a bit more diverse. Because the Divinity School was part of the University, we had a good number of students who were agnostic and even atheist. They were usually the most interesting, engaged, and thoughtful students in the classroom. And I enjoyed them immensely. They asked the difficult questions and were not content with easy answers. They didn’t buy into the standard party line of churchy propaganda. For many of our more dogmatic students, they were trouble-makers and nay-sayers. In many respects, though, they were secular prophets in that supposedly “sacred” space. They were refreshing breeze that cleared away much of the traditioned fog that we churchy people feel so comfortable in.

When our Kansas City group of doubters and questioners gather, it is refreshing. There is less tolerance for fuzzy doctrine and irrelevant tradition. There is greater honesty and truth proclaimed, there is a greater sharing of life, and there is greater potential for transformation than just about anywhere I go throughout the week. They ask tough questions; they are not satisfied with routine answers. They are spiritually attuned without being able to readily describe it. They know God, but they don’t know what to call the mysterium tremendum. They serve God but in ways that traditional mainline Protestantism hardly recognizes as spiritual. And their lives reflect a strong commitment to shalom, to a peaceful wellbeing for all. When we pray together – despite its awkwardness – the Spirit visits.

I love – even crave – the time we share in covenant.

Like all communities, this group is not perfect; it is not ideal. Some are more committed than others; some are struggling to carve out enough time. For some, the spiritual practices of our covenant are not as meaningful as they would like. A few of our members are wondering if they should give up on “church” altogether because it is largely irrelevant and so much of what happens on Sunday and in “church” seems anachronistic.

But still, this little band of doubting believers meet week after week, sharing our lives with one another, exploring the faith, holding each other up before God, struggling with making sense of life and of our life in God, and striving to live more fully in the sacred dimension of this incredibly secular world.

Next blog: Being church in the wilderness.

Jim Burklo got me thinking. In his most recent post (Progressive Christian Elevator Speeches) he identifies the difficulty congregations have these days in knowing how to talk about ourselves.  Even more difficult is talking about ourselves in a way that makes sense to the community at large.  We used to be the “Mainline church,” but we held a memorial service for that term some time back.  Burklo speaks of the desire to describe himself as “progressive,” but acknowledges that this term is increasingly cluttered as well.  Lacking a general term, he opts for what he calls “tag lines.” I would encourage you to read the full list, but a sampling includes:

I’m a progressive Christian who
* keeps the faith and drops the dogma
* experiences God more than I believe in any definition of God
* thinks that God is bigger than anybody’s idea about God

These tag lines speak a fresh corrective to a church that at times has placed a premium on “faith” as belief, while downplaying faith as action.  The present day church has learned anew that Christianity is something that is practiced.  It is not simply believed; it is lived.
In addition, these tag lines question the historical conversation about who God is and how God has been understood and they prioritize the Christian’s personal experience of God. It was Isaiah who confessed, “I saw the Lord high and lifted up.”  This is experiential worship.  Far too often, the people of God gather for worship with absolutely no expectation that God will show up. Burklo rightly asserts experience matters.   

However, as much as I like these tag lines, I also find them raising troubling questions.  Why is it necessary to separate experience from tradition or creed? Our ideas about God are surely limited. Our language falters under the weight of the truth we seek to speak. No definition of God will be adequate.  But the same is true for our experience of God.  God is bigger than our experience. To suggest that God be defined by my experience alone is reductionist.  The present day church that fails to learn how to hold our experience of God in conversation with the tradition of the church impoverishes itself. After all, the tradition of the church is the testimony of how generations before have experienced God.

One suspects, that the tension between experience and tradition may have less to do with testimony that is deemed outdated or passé, and has more to do with problems that emerge when I cannot define God on my own.  The taglines are presented not as statements defining a “church” but rather a Christian.   American culture does individualism well.  The tradition is the voice of community. It is the shared conversation of how God has been known in generations gone by.  However, as long as my experience governs my understanding of God, I don’t have to be bothered with how others experience God.  Experience matters.  But the experience of an undefined God may run  the risk of experiencing an unknown God.  

If I were to add a tag line or two, I might suggest:

I am a progressive Christian who knows
-Tradition matters: the movement of God’s Spirit today has integrity with the movement of God’s Spirit yesterday, today and every day.
 -Community matters: a faith revealed as love cannot be lived alone.
-Ideas matter: God is bigger than but not removed from our ideas, and can be found in our testimonies.

For a few days earlier this month I divided my time between my official job in Decatur,  Georgia and the New Baptist Covenant celebration in Atlanta.  The celebration had been planned by President Jimmy Carter and several other distinguished Baptists as an attempt to bring many Baptists together across the usual lines of our “Conventions.”  (These are not really “conventions” but alliances of churches that have conventions, very much like what other people call “denominations.”)

It was clear both from the attendees and from the agenda that the meetings attracted a certain kind of Baptist—those who found much that was persuasive in the traditional Social Gospel that was rooted in the theology of the Baptist Walter Rauschenbusch and flowered most powerfully in the action of the Baptist Martin Luther King, Jr.

We discovered that we were quite good at singing and praying together, and even at thinking about issues like poverty and AIDS, as long as we did not have to engage in arguments about scriptural inerrancy or local church autonomy.

I was particularly impressed by the speakers I heard or heard about.  President Jimmy Carter and President Bill Clinton I heard; Vice President Al Gore and Senator Charles Grassley I heard about.

What I noticed was this:  at home, with other Baptists, these political leaders were perfectly comfortable talking about their faith.  They did not talk about faith as a kind superficial add-on to their prior political commitments.  They did not use their faith to try to con us into voting for them or their preferred candidates.  It was clear that their social convictions were deeply grounded in their faith, and they could talk about that without shame, embarrassment, or guile.

I am a firm believer in the separation of church and state, and I do not think we want the kind of public religious discourse that suggests that believers make better officials than unbelievers, or, God knows, that Baptists have a corner on public virtue.

But I do wish that the media and the public had some clue to the fact that for these people, of different political persuasions, who might or might not like each other very much,  and for many other leaders, faith is a fundamental part of who they are.

I think many Americans don’t get that, to our loss.

Nine years ago – when I was 49 – I experienced the gift of a three month sabbatical. After 25 years of ministry and 25 years of marriage and 22 years of parenting, I was ready for a break. And so I put together 10 weeks of exploration – some into areas of uncomfortable discovery ( yoga and massage!), and some into retooling for a fresh commitment to ministry. 

At one of the seminars I attended, we spent five days studying the Enneagram – an ancient spiritual practice that invites us to explore the shadow side of our souls.  If you are not familiar with this frightening but life changing way of owning your own darkness, I strongly encourage you to investigate it. Coming face to face with my enneagram style/was the single most helpful discovery during my mid-life years. Which is saying a lot, because owning your enneagram is a way of acknowledging failure. An enneagram type is defined  by the weakness, the sin which is central to our lives – the single flaw that stands in the way of spiritual wholeness and radical dependence upon the grace of God. And the challenge of an enneagram discipline is to transform weakness into strength.

For those of you familiar with enneagram language, I am a Type One – sometimes called the Perfectionist or the Truth Teller. (Other well known Ones are the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther, Ralph Nader and Hillary Clinton. You get the picture!). We Ones are emphatic about truth, fairness, moral rectitude and social righteousness. At our best we can build transparency, accountability, order  and justice into the fabric of personal and social community. But at our worst, we are insufferable  - legalistic, judgmental, self-righteous, and unforgiving. And it is only when we see the pitch blackness of our ugly rigidity, that we can begin to let go – and realize that only God is perfect, only God is Truth, only God is Just. And if we invite God to be God, then our moral sensibilities can be subject to God’s grace, instead of our own stubborn certainty.

But enough of me. It has occurred to me, as I once again prepare for the journey of Lent, that exploring our shadow sides is the spiritual task of this season – perhaps the most creative time of the year for our souls. When Jesus wrestled with Satan during those 40 days of temptation, he was offered the opportunity to take virtues and turn them into self-serving vices. Feed the hungry – but do it miraculously with Super Bowl half-time tactics.( an excess of Enneagram Type Two!). Perform a miracle – but for your own aggrandizement instead of pointing to the power of God (an excess of Enneagram Type 4). Grab the authority over all the kingdoms – not for service but for power (an excess of Enneagram Type . Thank God that Jesus resisted – but it took 40 days of struggle and deprivation and brutal self examination before he survived the rigors of his shadow struggle.

My shadow side is just as strong at 58 as it was when I was 20 – but at least now I have the wisdom to recognize it.. And the temptations just keep coming – to judge others, to claim superior truth, to rail at the unfairness of life, to out do every one else’s righteousness – including God’s. And anger – the satanic force in the soul of a Type One – continues to gnaw at my soul.  I KNOW ALL OF THIS! But I still fall prey to the seduction of  the shadowy world. And so I must be brutally honest with my continuing failures. I must courageously explore this endless shadow. And I must earnestly cast my self upon the grace and mercy of God – who loves me – and needs me – failure and all. If my truth can somehow be filtered through God’s Truth, then maybe we can be partners in the ever continuing work of creation.

What is your shadow? Where is your failure? How do you separate yourself from God and pretend to BE God – in ways that distort the world, instead of love the world? And how can your flaw become a tiny flame of holiness in God’s ongoing work of redemption?

Exploring the wilderness of shadow is our Lenten Call.

May it be so!

(A good book to begin an Enneagram journey is called Parables and the Enneagram, by Clarence Thomson. 144 pages.)

The continuing relevance of the great blues song, Stormy Monday, popularized by T. Bone Walker and re-popularized by the Allman Brothers and—on any given weekend—by various bar bands across the country, is self-evident.  But what might it mean?  One listens to the narrator’s voice work through the (fatalistic?) week, declaring Tuesday “just as bad” as that Monday which gives the song it’s title.  What about the weekend—does it provide a welcome and renewing respite from the difficulties and challenges of the week, or simply a mundane, if perhaps a bit more playful, recasting of the same?  And Sunday—are those Church prayers which are referred to hopeful, thankful, confessional, desperate or some combination thereof? 
 
The brief period of time bookended by Super Bowl and Transfiguration Sunday, on one side, and Ash Wednesday, on the other, punctuated by Super-, or as some would have it, Super-Duper -, Tuesday and concurrently Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras, provide  us with quite an extraordinary, and arguably quite a stormy, set of days.  Political races, whether despite themselves or due to the possibilities they suggest, tend to provide some degree of hopeful, even inspirational, rhetoric; at the same time, they inevitably descend into, or even actively court, mudslinging and contemptuous rhetoric.   Transfiguration Sunday, for those who care—and dare— to engage it, provides some pretty heady, and very gutsy, stuff for our own, and our churches’, journeys.  The Super Bowl—well, is it even about football anymore?  I guess we do see some between the “dot.com,” junk food, and car commercials. Mardi Gras, by its very name, suggests— and by testimony of those involved includes—various “rich” offerings of (at least fleeting) delight.  And Shrove Tuesday, bless it’s quaint and foreign (to most Americans) sounding name, interestingly and insightfully suggests not a one-sided, solemn, guilt-ridden confession, but genuine relationship, consideration, sharing, and even dialogue on the way towards, one hopes and prays, forgiveness and recommitment to, and from, the community. 

Indeed one important and missing (from the lives of all too many in our world) ingredient which might tie together these seemingly disparate days and activities is related to the “shriving” and “shrift” from which Shrove Tuesday takes its name.  Too many individuals and organizations in our “communication age”—now there’s an irony!—give each other only “short shrift.”  That is, we—as a society, as a set of individuals, as consumers and as providers, as competitors on the gridiron or in the (far more ruthless) marketplace, and  even (sadly) as coworkers, team-members,  lovers, family members, etc— simply don’t listen to and engage one another as God intended and intends.  The full phrase in which “short shrift” is found in the old English saying is telling: “short shrift and a long rope.”  That is, as we might translate it into our vernacular, “don’t deal with him/her, let him/her hang.”  We’re good at that!

The Transfiguration Story, in marvelous fashion, joins the glorified Jesus on the mountaintop while he is “in conversation” with that deep and rich tradition of the law and the prophets which provides his religious identity and impulse (Luke 8:30).  And what was the conversation about?  Jesus’ “exodus” (the word is clear in the Greek , if not in most translations).  Peter wants to bottle the moment (v. 33)—not a bad impulse, arguably.  But, God knows, there’s work to be done “down” there (v. 37).  And so Jesus takes his followers there, to encounter and engage others. 

Returning to our song—Tuesday is indeed “bad” in that course of things in which “short shrift and a long rope” rules the day.  But insofar as it may offer some real playfulness along the way, and some real engagement and encounter for the journey, Shrove Tuesday offers a suggestion of God’s will and God’s way for God’s people and for the world.  In every exodus there is the high point of liberation and the low points of wilderness wandering.  Fellow travelers, let us be there for each other along the way in order to point the way to fuller and truer engagement of each other and of God!  Now that’s rich.  And super.

Since The Center for Progressive Christianity came into being in 1994, it has succeeded in widely spreading the term “progressive Christian” around the world.  It embraces a pluralistic spirituality, inclusion of people who have been traditionally excluded from the church, openness to metaphorical interpretations of Christian tradition, and commitment to practicing the faith to make the world a better place.

But now it can be said that there are two kinds of progressive Christianity in America.  In the last few years, the term “progressive Christian” has begun to be used by evangelical Christians who are disaffected from right-wing politics.    Their definition of “progressive Christian” is mostly a political one; they tend to have orthodox, traditional views about religion while standing for economic justice and peace.

By contrast, The Center for Progressive Christianity does not define progressive Christianity in political terms.  It’s 8 Point Welcome Statement embraces people of all sorts of persuasions.  Our movement is committed to inclusiveness at many levels. We care a lot about justice, peace, and environmental responsibility, but we recognize that there are many different ways to approach these goals.  While we encourage political activism, we care even more about values that are more enduring than current political passions.

So it is more important than ever for us to be clear about what we mean when we say we are progressive Christians.  For years I’ve been writing and collecting “tag lines”, short phrases that we can share with others about the kind of Christianity we represent.  Lots of folks are embarrassed to call themselves Christians, because of all the bad things that have been done in the name of our faith, and particularly by the traditional Christian claim that Christianity is the only true religion.  Our progressive Christian movement is about  re-imagining and re-defining our religion, boldly reclaiming our identity, and finding succinct ways to express it:

I’m a progressive Christian who

* keeps the faith and drops the dogma
* experiences God more than I believe in any definition of God
* thinks that my faith is about deeds, not creeds
* takes the Bible seriously because I don’t take it literally
* thinks spiritual questions are more important than religious answers
* cares more about what happens in the war-room and the board-room than about what happens in the bedroom
* thinks that other religions can be as good for others as my religion is good for me
* goes to a church that doesn’t require you to park your brain outside before you come inside
* thinks that God is bigger than anybody’s idea about God
* thinks that God evolves

Do you have any “elevator speeches” you’d like to add to this list?

“Kingdom of God” may well be one of the most common phrases in Christian parlance.  According to the Gospel accounts, it was on Jesus’ mind and tongue a lot.  A whole generation (at least) of theologians, church leaders and members sought to “bring in” the Kingdom by applying the ethical teachings of Jesus.  One seminary I know has a “Kingdom Conference” once (or is it twice?) a year, bringing in well-known scholars, preachers, missionaries and representatives of all sorts of ministries, all seeking to describe, explain and embody the reign of God.

So, what about the psychology of the Kingdom?  An odd idea?  I’m reading a book by Robert C. Roberts: Spiritual  Emotions: A Pscyhology of Christian Virtues (Eerdmans, 2007).  In the chapter on humility, he reflects on the “psy-chological structure” of the kingdom of God, which is love: “That kingdom [of God] is a society in which each member is so surrounded by and conscious of focused love – both the love of his [sic] God and fellow creatures – that measures and inequalities of the kind that preoccupy us in the current order of things fade into the background of inattention,” (p. 90).  Here is a rendering of Jesus’ response to the religious leader about the greatest command-ment, to which Jesus added the second: “You shall love the Lord your God…and your neighbor as yourself.”  We get the ethics of this command, but do we get the psychology?   

Now, we cognitively “get” all the talk about love within the kingdom of God.  Christians are good at talking about love.  Maybe it’s because we don’t experience it that much, which is a true tragedy.  Maybe it is because it does not penetrate the psychological structure of our souls.  Admittedly, Roberts is really talking about humility, but he shows how the deep penetration of divine love into our hearts – into our psychological structures – is a necessary step on the way to what he calls the virtue emotions like humility. 

A quick aside: talk of humility can quickly elicit a suspicious response.  Feminist and other forms of liberation thought have shown us that when people in power start talking about humility, it mostly turns out to be something that others (i.e., not the ones advocating it) should take up.  I want to acknowledge this tendency.  But if I under-stand Roberts, then even the powerful in the kingdom of God, with psychological structures permeated by divine love, become willing to lose their lives (position, status, prerogatives, control), in order to have the life of the king-dom.

I’m not naïve (I think?  Hope?) about the radical change involved in this sort of Kingdom love transforming our psychological structures.  To experience it usually involves a prior and ongoing death struggle.  But I am taken by the vision: the transformation of psychological structures that show the love of God.  It is, after all, the heart of the Gospel.