"Like a Flag Flown at Half-Mast to Mark a Tragedy"

Eric Reid and Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the National Anthem last season

He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.
Philippians 2:7-10

In a Tuesday morning tweet, theologian Diana Butler Bass wrote:

Preaching on Sun & just checked assigned lectionary text:  "At the name of Jesus, every knee should bend."

I kid you not.

Apparently even the Apostle Paul has something to say about NFL players “taking a knee during the National Anthem on Sunday.

The protest began in the 2016 preseason when Eric Reid and Colin Kaepernick chose to sit on the bench rather than stand during the national anthem to protest racial injustice and police brutality. A week later they decided that they should kneel rather than sit in order to make clear that their protest was meant to be respectful of the anthem and the flag.

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Reid writes:

“After hours of careful consideration, and even a visit from Nate Boyer, a retired Green Beret and former NFL player, we came to the conclusion that we should kneel, rather than sit, the next day during the anthem as a peaceful protest. We chose to kneel because it’s a respectful gesture. I remember thinking our posture was like a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy.”

Like a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy. 

Hardly a sign of disrespect.

“It baffles me that our protest is still being misconstrued as disrespectful to the country, flag, and military personnel,” Reid wrote. “We chose it because it’s exactly the opposite. It has always been my understanding that the brave men and women who fought and died for our country did so to ensure that we could live in a fair and free society, which includes the right to speak out in protest.”

Other players around the league joined Reid and Kaepernick in their silent protest, but it did not gain widespread attention until the President put it front and center in a speech on behalf of Senator Luther Strange in Huntsville, Alabama. He asked the crowd if they would “love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, he’s fired’?”

He also called for fans to boycott the league until the protest was stopped.

Which resulted in many more players choosing to take a knee during the anthem, and many of Mr. Trump’s fans reacting with anger toward the players.

We might pause for a minute to think about the language Mr. Trump used. The Nazis and White Supremacists in Charlottesville were carefully described with the generalization that there were good people on both sides. But (mostly) black football players taking part in a peaceful protest are called “sons of bitches.”

When the “Black Lives Matter” protests began, a major part of the criticism was that the protests were not sufficiently peaceful. But it is hard to think of anything more peaceful than kneeling.

In his “Minority of One” column in the Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman writes:

“. . . if you don’t like how Black Lives Matter pursues its agenda, you should welcome the NFL players’ approach. It’s silent; it’s not disruptive; and it’s entirely nonviolent. It doesn’t block traffic, occupy police or frighten bystanders. . . That the display evokes so much fury and disgust among whites, from the president on down, confirms what was evident 50 years ago. The problem is not how blacks raise their complaints about American society; it’s that they raise them.”

  

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

Sin Is Not About Sex or Dessert

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? 
Romans 5:1

In Paul’s letter to the Church in Rome, he argues that God’s grace is always greater than our sin.

Sin and grace are ancient words of the faith.  But they sound oddly out of place in modern life. “Amazing Grace” is not only the most popular hymn for Christians, it is probably the most popular song on the planet.  But that does not mean we are comfortable with grace.  And before we can really understand grace, we need to understand sin.

Contrary to what we see in the popular culture, sin is not about dessert and it is not about sex.

Paul Tillich, one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth (or any other) century, argues that another word for sin is separation.  In his famous sermon, “You Are Accepted,” he contends that to be in a state of sin is to be in a state of separation: separation from God, from others, and from ourselves.

Just as we cannot be born without separating from our mothers, so we cannot exist without separation from our essence, which is with God.  Existence necessarily means separation and estrangement.  We are not only separated from God’s being, we are also separated from God’s will.  And we know that.  If we were not separated from God’s will, then we would never do things to hurt others and ourselves.

We know that we are also separated from others.  That is obvious physically.  But it is more than that.  

Immanuel Kant once said with courageous honesty, that there is something in the misfortune of our closest friends that does not displease us.  When something bad happens to someone else, we are sad, but we are also relieved.  Somewhere deep inside a voice echoes: “Thank goodness it wasn’t me.”  “. . . it’s not my child.”

But our situation is deeper than that.  Our separation is greater.  

One of the hardest things for those who have lost a loved one is that life goes on all around as if nothing had happened.  Even close friends soon go back to their own business.  

Those who have lost a parent, or a child, or a spouse, or a close friend are left alone.  Sometimes people ask why he or she doesn’t “get over it.”  When we are grieving, we feel as if the world should stop, at least for an instant.  But it goes on, as if nothing had happened.  We are separated from one another.  We are estranged.

We are also separated from ourselves, from our best selves.  Sometimes we experience this acutely and we say that we don’t know who we are.  Or when we do something which we know is wrong, we say, “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”  In the story of the Prodigal Son, Jesus tells us that “when he came to himself” the son decided to return home.

Grace is the opposite of sin.  If sin is separation, then grace is union, or more accurately, reunion.  By God’s grace we are reunited with God, with others, and with our selves.

The word which Paul Tillich uses to help us understand the working of grace, is acceptance.  To experience God’s grace, is to be accepted by God.  God’s acceptance of us enables us to accept others, and even to accept ourselves.

For many years I have used this concept of acceptance as the basis of a benediction.  The general idea came from my late friend and mentor, Bill Ziegler.  To be honest, I cannot say precisely how what I say differs from what he said, and I don’t think that the differences are terribly important.

It begins with the proclamation of God’s grace:

I send you forth with Good News.

That God loves you.

And accepts you just the way you are.

This acceptance is not something we have earned.  It is not something which God will give us after we fulfill certain requirements, after we have been to counseling, or lost weight, or conquered our bad habits.  It is a gift.  And real gifts have no conditions.  God takes us as we are.

This does not mean that we should not change and grow.  I have a long list of things I want to change or improve about myself.  And my family could probably give me an even longer list.  There are plenty of things in our lives that we ought to change in order to become what God calls us to be, but that change and growth is not a condition of God’s acceptance.

The same thing is true in our personal relationships, with children and parents, with spouses and friends.  It is hard for people to change unless they are accepted as they are.  It is that unconditional acceptance, that gift, which gives us the freedom to change and grow.  The gift of acceptance makes me want to change and grow, and that gift also makes it possible.

God’s acceptance is personal.  God loves you and accepts you.  This is not just a general statement.  It is specific and personal.  It is addressed to individuals.

And by that love and acceptance,

calls to you and to me

to accept this day

and this life

as God’s gift.

This is the challenge.  God’s gift calls for a response.  As God accepts us, so we are called to accept, and affirm, and claim, the life that God has given us.

That is not easy.  Unless we are remarkably comfortable, it is not always easy to affirm life as a gift.  When I look out on Sunday morning and see the hurt and grief that people bring to church with them, and realize that there are other hurts that I don’t know about, it would not surprise me at all, if, from time to time, people looked up and thought to themselves, “easy for you to say!”

There are many times when life does not feel like a gift.  And at certain points in my life as a pastor, I have thought that perhaps I should send folks out with some other word.  When people are hurting, what right do I have to tell them that life is a gift?

I felt that concern acutely during the many months that a young friend was struggling with cancer.  But when we were planning his memorial service, he told me specifically that he wanted me to use that benediction.  “I love that,” he said.  “I want you to remind people that God loves them.  And life is a gift.”

We are often more comfortable with yesterday, and we may be more hopeful about tomorrow.  But today is what God has given us, and today is what we are called to live.

To live it to the full.

And we are called to “live it to the full.”  Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly.  The apostle Paul said that we are more than survivors.  Our challenge is not simply to endure.  He insisted that we are “more than conquerors” through God’s love.  The great Methodist evangelist, E. Stanley Jones, said that Christians are called to “victorious living.”

Several years ago Bishop Dale White gave a wonderful sermon at the Memorial Service at Annual Conference.  He used Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and his text was “Rejoice, and again I say, rejoice!”  

He recalled hearing Dr. Christian Barnard, the pioneering heart surgeon talk about joy and suffering.  Dr. Barnard spoke of visiting two children in South Africa.  One little boy had lost his eyesight when his father, in a drunken rage, threw a kerosene lamp at him.  Now the plastic surgeons were rebuilding his face.  The other little boy could not walk and had both legs in a cast after several operations.  

When he opened the door to the children’s ward, the nurses were out of the room and these two boys had commandeered a food cart.  One could not see and the other could not walk, but together they careened around the ward at high speed, to the squealing delight of the other children.  

Before Dr. Barnard could think of how to restore order, they crashed into the brick wall at the far end of the ward.  The dishes clattered to the floor and it was a mess.  But the boys were thrilled.  

As he pulled them up, they were laughing and smiling, and one of them proclaimed, “Did you see that?  We won!”

They were winning the race of life.  They were living victoriously, in spite of the odds.

To share God’s love and hope and joy 

with one another.

Finally, we are called “to share God’s love and hope and joy with one another.”  We do this poorly, even on our best days.  But it is still what we are called to do.  And we know that there are times, when we look at one another, when we listen to one another, that God’s grace comes alive for us. What more important work could we have than that?  What greater witness could we give to the Gospel?

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

Standing Firm for Full Inclusion

Newly Elected Bishop Karen Oliveto

“So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.”

II Thessalonians 2:15 (NRSV)

UnitedMethodists Standing Firm is the latest iteration of those United Methodists opposed to the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons within the life of the United Methodist Church. It stands beside UM Action, Good News, and The Confessing Movement, the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) and their allies.

The Standing Firm folks chose this verse from Second Thessalonians as their text. It is an ironic choice in at least two ways.

First, the “traditions” to which Paul (or more likely a disciple of Paul) refers were only about twenty minutes old when the letter was written. I’m just kidding. They were maybe a decade or two old. They were traditional in the same way that a particular Christmas Eve service becomes a tradition if the church uses it more than two years in a row. Paul (or his disciple) is not pointing to some ancient custom, he is talking about what he just taught them.

Second, the church in Thessalonica is being urged to stand firm in the face of persecution by the Empire. There is no comparable persecution of “traditionalists” in the church today. If any group can claim persecution, it would be our LGBTQ sisters and brothers, who are not allowed full inclusion in the life of the church, not the people who are organized to maintain that exclusion.

Standing Firm points to the election of Dr. Karen Oliveto as a Bishop in the Western Jurisdiction of the UMC as the event which, as they see it, elevated tensions within the church to "an unprecedented level." Dr. Oliveto is an openly gay clergywoman living in what they refer to as "a partnered relationship."

Then they offer a cautionary observation to their supporters:

“Let us not lose perspective.  Representing just two percent of United Methodism, the fast-declining Western Jurisdiction that elected Dr. Oliveto on its own does not represent the present or future of our church.”

But the question that we should ask is whether the Western Jurisdiction, declining as it is, might nevertheless be the “saving remnant” of which the prophet Isaiah speaks. Is this not, as many of us believe, a sign of life and hope?

Standing Firm admonishes supporters not to forget “the many great accomplishments of last May’s General Conference, at which liberal delegates once again gave up even trying to remove our denomination’s ban on same-sex unions and it became abundantly clear that the momentum in our denomination is decisively with the growing orthodox majority.”

True. By every reasonable measure, the traditionalists had many successes, but it is also important to note that what they term “the growing orthodox majority,” which exists globally does not exist in the United States. Here at home our “orthodoxy” on issues of human sexuality is radically out of step with our culture and it is a major hindrance to the effective communication of the Gospel. Standing Firm declares that “global United Methodism is growing and increasingly orthodox.” And they are glad that our denomination is moving “away from its USA-only liberal Protestant identity.” But “global United Methodism” is also moving away from its membership here at home.

Finally, Standing Firm offers a condescending affirmation:

 “We are committed to loving ministry with ALL people, including our friends and loved ones who identify as LGBTQIA+.  We grieve for the deep pain inflicted by secular Western culture’s confusions about human sexuality. . . . The answer is for our church to rediscover the riches of Christian teaching about the holiness and good news of God’s plan for marriage and the human body.”

Seriously.

The problem, as they see it, is not the church’s exclusionary and unjust policies. The problem is “secular Western culture’s confusions about human sexuality.” That’s the source of “the deep pain” suffered by “our friends and loved ones who identify as LGBTQIA+.

They are right about the pain. It is real. But they are wrong about the source. And as long as they persist in excluding LGBTQIA+ folks, that pain will continue.

Thank you for reading. Please feel free to comment here or on Facebook. Please share on social media as you wish.

Handel's Messiah and the Killing in San Bernardino

What then are we to say about these things? 
If God is for us, who can be against us? 
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:31, 35, 37-39

What then are we to say about these things? 

After the shooting in San Bernardino, which was the second mass shooting of that day, what can we say? How does our faith speak to such horrific events?

Last Sunday afternoon I attended a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” by the Rhode Island Civic Chorale and Orchestra at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Newport.

It was the complete “Messiah,” not a selection of “favorites” pretending to be the real thing. So it was long. Two and a half hours. But it was wonderful. Elaine, who sings in the chorus, had told me repeatedly that I did not have to go just because she was singing, and afterward she inquired anxiously how I had endured. “What’s not to like,” I answered. “It begins with Isaiah and ends with Paul. What could be better?”

And then we talked about the individual pieces and the movement through the scriptures. Those verses from Paul’s letter to the Romans provide the text for one of my favorite pieces.

Our conversation moved from the verses in Romans back to the “Hallelujah Chorus,” which is the theological and emotional center of the oratorio. I told Elaine that I found it incredibly moving when everyone stood and the chorus sang, “For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth . . . Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

If you ask me what I believe about the resurrection, I will tell you that I am long past anything that sounds like a resuscitated corpse or a flying body. I don’t think Jesus popped out of the grave like a groundhog on February second. And a close examination of the Gospel accounts reveals an understated sense of mystery that is somewhat at odds with our tendency toward an Easter Sunday extravaganza.

There is a sense in which the “Hallelujah Chorus” does not fit very well with my theology. 

I was well into what might have been a long dissertation on this when Elaine interrupted my reflection to say, “Yes . . . but it’s true!”

Of course, that’s the point. It is moving because it is true. 

Fifty years ago this past spring, at the conclusion of the march from Selma to Montgomery, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the steps of the State Capitol. Recognizing the frustration of the long struggle for civil rights, he drew on the poetry of James Russell Lowell and William Cullen Bryant, and a sermon by Theodore Parker, to preach about the meaning of resurrection:

I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?" (Speak, sir) Somebody’s asking, "How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?" Somebody’s asking, "When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?" Somebody’s asking, "When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, (Speak, speak, speak) plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, (Speak) and truth bear it?" (Yes, sir) 

I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, (Yes, sir) however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, (No sir) because "truth crushed to earth will rise again." (Yes, sir) 

How long? Not long, (Yes, sir) because "no lie can live forever." (Yes, sir) 
How long? Not long, (All right. How long) because "you shall reap what you sow." (Yes, sir) 
How long? (How long?) Not long: (Not long) 

Truth forever on the scaffold, (Speak) 
Wrong forever on the throne, (Yes, sir) 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, (Yes, sir) 
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, 
Keeping watch above his own. 
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. (Yes, sir)

Handel’s “Messiah” is about faith in its simplest form. It does not focus on social justice as Jesus did. But without that faith it is hard to sustain the struggle for justice and peace. We are always proclaiming Easter in a Good Friday world. 

And our faith is that Easter has the power to transform Good Friday. We don’t yet have the answers to gun violence. But we will. And we don’t yet know how to prevent terrorism. But we will. 

Until the kingdoms of this world
have become the kingdom of God
and he shall reign
forever and ever.
Amen.
Revelation 11:15

Marxism, Materialism, and Biblical Literalism

While Paul was waiting for Silas and Timothy in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and also in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities.” (This was because he was telling the good news that Jesus was the Christ.) So they took him and brought him to the Areopagus and asked him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.” Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.
Acts 17:16-21

Paul’s experience in Athens reminds me of my time at Wesleyan. Like the Athenians, we loved nothing better than “telling or hearing something new.” And, like Paul, we loved to argue and debate with anyone and everyone.

At Wesleyan’s College of Letters, our debates were sometimes deep and significant, at other times they were shallow and superficial. But always, they were intense.

One of my enduring memories is of a particularly intense discussion in response to a paper presented by a visiting scholar. I have no idea what the paper was about or who the presenter was. I remember that I had trouble following the logic of his argument, and I was listening closely as various professors made their formal responses. What stood out to me was that each of the respondents used the word “abstruse.” 

One after another they thanked our visiting scholar for his “complex” and “abstruse” analysis of whatever it was that he was analyzing. Eventually, as students entered the discussion, they echoed the professors’ judgments of this “complex” and “abstruse” presentation. And one by one they apologized, using the most scholarly sounding language, for not really understanding what this obviously brilliant man was saying.

As the discussion went on, one of our professors, Norman Rudich, became increasingly agitated. He rubbed his eyes as if trying to see through the fog of scholarly jargon. “Just because we don’t understand something,” he said with obvious frustration, “doesn’t mean that the argument is abstruse. It may just lack clarity.”

Other professors worked hard to make nice, but most of us were relieved. Dr. Rudich was almost totally blind, which only added to the symbolism. The Emperor had no clothes and it was the blind man who saw it first.

Norman Rudich was a professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Wesleyan for more than thirty years. But he was best known for teaching Marxism. He was a committed Marxist and a devout atheist. 

In my junior year I took his Marxism course. It was a great intellectual exercise and later when I was studying Latin American Liberation Theology, it was important to have a context for understanding the Marxist analysis used by the Latin American theologians. Still, it was a strange experience. I don’t think any of us who took that course were true believers, but I was a special case. Dr. Rudich’s commitment to philosophical materialism and atheism made it impossible for him to admit that there was anything good in Christianity. Though he was basically a gentle man, his intellect and his certainty made him an intimidating figure. I never dared to ask him what he thought about Paul Tillich’s critique of Marxism as a secular religion.

I could understand the intellectual appeal of atheism, but I was convinced that materialism would never go anywhere. The idea that nothing is real beyond what we can see and touch seemed impossible. What about poetry? Can you reduce Shakespeare to materialism? Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman. What about music? Mozart reduced to buzzing atoms and molecules. And what about love? 

Materialism seemed to make the world flat. Lacking depth and meaning. 

Much to my surprise, materialism has found new life. Almost no one claims to be a materialist, but many seem to see the world that way. Some of the new materialism comes with the new atheism, but many atheists are not materialists. Surprisingly, much of this new materialism comes from people who call themselves Christian.

Christian literalism is in many ways a new form of materialism. It reduces God to an object that exists along with other objects. In its quest for certainty, literalism gives us a god small enough to fit neatly into a materialist view of the universe.

In his blog called “On the Way,” Presbyterian pastor Kenneth Kovacs defines the literalism I am talking about:

Literalism is the belief, the philosophy, the attitude, the assumption that truth can only be found in exactness and certainty.  It’s an obsession (and it can be an obsession) with what is actual, literal, with the “letter of the law,” with the need to nail down (sometimes, actually) what is true and not true and then defending that “truth” at all costs. Literalism is a way of being and believing that seeks to maintain a tight “hold” on reality. It’s a way of being that is suspicious (perhaps paranoid) of anything that smacks of analogy or metaphor, of anything that leaves open the possibility of multiple meanings, of plurality.  For the literalist there can only be one interpretation of a text, whether sacred (such as the Koran or the Bible) or secular (such as the U. S. Constitution), only one meaning, only one way to believe and one way to be in the world.  The literalist will take a metaphor and try to turn it into a thing, an idea, a historic fact.  Or, a literalist fails to understand the meaning of a metaphor because s/he is, well, a literalist.

The god of Christian literalism cannot be seen and touched in the same way that we can see and touch other objects, but he (always “he”) can be observed, predicted and even manipulated, with certainty. The god of Christian literalism is not the One that Paul Tillich speaks of as the Ground of our Being, or the Ultimate Reality in our lives. The god of Christian literalism is not Being Itself. For the Christian literalist, symbol and mystery are replaced with a god who is small enough to be known with certainty, but ultimately is not worth knowing.

The Problem with Prayer

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Romans 8:26-27

A few weeks ago a friend posted a link to an article titled “Why I Hate Prayer,” by Jim Mulholland, a former pastor who now maintains a web site called “Leaving Your Religion,” which offers “guidance for becoming non-religious.”

I was not surprised that someone hated prayer. The idea is common in both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures. The prophet Amos proclaimed God’s hatred of prayer and worship without justice. And Jesus had harsh words for those who made a show of their prayers.

But I was surprised by the idea that anyone needed help in “leaving your religion.” In my experience, folks seem to make that transition without any help at all. As witness the joke told in one variation or another in every denomination. It begins with the question of how to rid the church of mice and ends with the punchline: “We just confirm (or baptize) them and they never come back again.”

Mulholland hates prayer first because he grieves for those who pray desperately in horrific circumstances and face the pain of unanswered prayers. But his second reason is that the celebration of “answered” prayers can inflict even more pain on those whose prayers have not been answered.

He writes, “Perhaps the more graphic examples of this cruelty happened in one of my last years of ministry. One Sunday, a woman stood to announce that – after several months – her prayers had been answered and she was pregnant. Everyone was excited and happy for her, except for me and one other. As I looked out on the congregation I saw the crestfallen face of a woman who had recently shared with me her long depression over her infertility. It wasn’t enough that she would never have children. Now she had to struggle with why her prayers went unanswered.”

When Christians celebrate “answered prayers” as a sign of faithfulness, they imply that the reason why the prayers of their sisters and brothers have not yielded similar results is because they lacked faith. If we add in the folks who, often innocently, celebrate answers to trivial prayers, for a parking space, or a trip without traffic, or sunshine on a picnic, or the victory of their favorite sports team, it becomes even worse.

So Mulholland declares emphatically, “If there is a god who answers the prayers of some men, women and children, but ignores the prayers of others, I have no interest in such a god. That god would be source of inequity and not a god of justice. I would hate a god who answered trivial requests while ignoring the pleas of the parents of starving children.”

In a radio sermon preached in 1952, Reinhold Niebuhr said that for many people, believing in God means “that that we have found a way to the ultimate source and end of life that gives us, against all the chances and changes of life, some special security and some special favor.” As an example, he speaks of the prayers “that many a mother with a boy in Korea must pray, ‘A thousand at thy side and 10,000 at thy right hand, let no evil come to my boy.’”

For the mother or father with a child in danger, that is the most natural prayer in the world and it is the deepest desire of our hearts. Yet in the end it is impossible. As Niebuhr explains, “The Christian faith believes that beyond, within and beyond, the tragedies and the contradictions of history we have laid hold upon a loving heart, and the proof of whose love, on the one hand, is the impartiality toward all of his children and, secondly, a mercy which transcends good and evil.”

In a FaithLink article called “Prayer in a Postmodern World,” Alex Joyner begins with a reference to the movie “Gravity.” He describes poignant scenes of the astronauts “floating in space talking into the void in the hope that they will be heard.” The lead characters, played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, are set adrift when flying debris strikes the space shuttle on which they are working. They do not know whether or not anyone can hear them, but hoping that ground control might somehow pick up their transmissions, they tell their story in great detail.

“Later,” writes Joyner, “Bullock’s character intercepts a radio signal from Earth, and though she can’t understand all that is being said, she pleads with the staticky voice to pray for her.” She feels compelled to explain, “I’d pray for myself, but I’ve never prayed. Nobody ever taught me how.”

In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, he tells us that the astronaut is not alone. No one knows how to pray. We don’t know what to say and we don’t know how to say it. Prayer would be impossible if it were not for the intervention of the Spirit of God within us, which prays through us.

In a sermon on this passage, Paul Tillich writes, “This may help us also to understand the most mysterious part of Paul’s description of prayer, namely, that the Spirit "intercedes with sighs too deep for words." Just because every prayer is humanly impossible, just because it brings deeper levels of our being before God than the level of consciousness, something happens in it that cannot be expressed in words. Words, created by and used in our conscious life, are not the essence of prayer. The essence of prayer is the act of God who is working in us and raises our whole being to Himself. The way in which this happens is called by Paul "sighing." Sighing is an expression of the weakness of our creaturely existence. Only in terms of wordless sighs can we approach God, and even these sighs are His work in us.”

Karl Barth said that “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the the disorder of the world.” It is a rebellion against the chaos and an affirmation of the Spirit. The promise of Christian faith is not that God will grant us a special exemption from life’s hardships, or give us a special reward for our virtue, but that at the center of life there is a loving heart, which will be with us now and forever. The gift of prayer is that we open ourselves to that loving heart.

The Fast that I Choose

Is not this the fast that I choose?
Isaiah 58:6

I know that many people may find it hard to believe that Isaiah, writing so many centuries ago, could be talking about my Mustang.

Amazing, right?

Actually, Isaiah is proclaiming a message from God. He isn’t claiming to have come up with this on his own. Still, it’s amazing.

But I don’t think there is a better fast than my Mustang. It is the best kind of fast there is.

I have been thinking about this because the Mustang turned fifty last week. Not my Mustang. Mine is a 2012. But the first Mustang was introduced fifty years ago last week. You may recall that last week was called “Holy Week.” I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

The golden anniversary has been the occasion for much nostalgic reflection.

In her Sunday column in the New York Times, Maureen Dowd wrote, “It’s weird to be jealous of your car. But I am. Men look at my car with such naked lust, their eyes devouring the curves and chrome, that I often feel as though I’m intruding on an intimate moment. Women like it, too. . . . But the icon evokes a special feeling in men. It’s the Proustian madeleine of cars, stirring old dreams and new. Guys sometimes follow in the American beauty’s dreamy wake, by car or by bike, and leave mash notes on the windshield with their numbers, pleading for me to sell it.”

But Dowd has no intention of selling her 1965 convertible. When the first Mustangs were introduced, they were called 1964 and a half’s, but officially they were 1965’s. They looked good then and they look good now.

I have been a car guy since I was a small child and I was interested in the original Mustang, but in those years my car lust was directed toward MG’s and Austin Healey’s. I loved the Mustang Steve McQueen drove in “Bullitt,” but I was more taken with Dustin Hoffman’s Alfa Romeo in “The Graduate.”

When I told Elaine I was writing a blog about the fiftieth anniversary of the Mustang, she asked what that had to do with “Thinking Faith.” I was momentarily speechless, and she asked if my text would be, “I came that they might have acceleration and have it abundantly.” I did not laugh. In the first place, acceleration is a good thing. In the second place, I thought that really would be a good text. The original, not the edited version. Wasn’t the Mustang an illustration of “abundant life?” And finally, I could not understand how once again something that seemed so obvious to me was not obvious to everyone else.

It’s about nostalgia dressed up as a theology. It’s about how we always think the past is better than the present. Like the people of Israel, in the wilderness, wanting to go back to Egypt. But faith is always about being called into the future. Like the angel telling the women at the tomb that “he is going ahead of you to Galilee.”

One of the underlying themes in the Mustang anniversary is our longing for the past. This comment from the Mustang facebook page is a good illustration:

“Apparently, the Ford Mustang today celebrates it's 50th birthday. While the current models aren't nearly as well-designed and iconic as the ones built in the 60's and early 70's, this is still an impressive milestone. . . . They sure don't make them like that anymore… Happy Birthday!”

The current models aren't as well designed as those from the 60's and early 70's? Seriously? Does he know anything about new Mustangs?

I can appreciate the skepticism. I could not believe it when I saw the first advertisement for the new 3.7 liter V6 Mustang. They claimed 305 horsepower and 31 miles per gallon. It seemed impossible. But it’s true, at least the MPG part is true. On trips I always get on the high side of 30. The record number for me was a little over 34 mpg on a trip from Rhode Island to Maine. I have no way to measure the horsepower. I can tell you that it’s not just fast, it’s scary fast. It is, with a nod to Isaiah, the very best kind of fast. And did I mention the 6 speed transmission?

In 1964 the original base Mustang came with an inline six that produced about 85 horsepower (by today’s measurement methods), and the basic V8 delivered about 150 horsepower. Don’t even ask about the gas mileage. If you want a V8 today, you can get 400 horsepower and 25 mpg or 500 hp and mpg in the low 20’s on the highway.

Make no mistake, the old muscle cars were fast. A Steve McQueen type Mustang with a 390 inch V8 (6.4 L) would do zero to 60 mph in 5.7 seconds and run the quarter mile in 14.1 seconds. That’s very fast. According to the road test people, that would make it just a few ticks slower than a new V6.

In his letter to the church in Philippi, Paul speaks of “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.” There’s a new 2.3 liter turbocharged four cylinder available on the 2015. It’s supposed to have over 300 horsepower. It will be lighter and should get both better gas mileage and better performance. They really don’t make them like they used to.

Nothing Can Separate Us

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:37-39

Can anything separate us from the love of God?

No, at least according to the Apostle Paul.

In the last verses of the eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome he declares with absolute certainty that nothing can separate us from the love of God, not “hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword” (v.35).

Yesterday the General Conference of the United Methodist Church voted with Paul, but it was closer than you might think.

In the morning session they were revising the Preamble to our United Methodist Social Principles. The Rev. We Hyung Chang, pastor of the Belmont UMC in Belmont, Massachusetts, one of the clergy delegates from New England, proposed that they add this sentence, “We stand united in declaring our faith that God’s grace is available to all, that neither belief nor practice can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”

This might seem like basic Wesleyan theology. In fact, it might seem like basic Christianity. But among some of the delegates there was a fear that this would somehow soften their declaration that homosexuals and non-Christians really are (by their own choice, of course) separated from the love of God.

The Rev. Lisa Dianne Schubert, a clergy delegate from Indiana proposed that the word “nothing” be substituted for “neither belief nor practice. As she explained, “I want to say like in Romans 8, “nothing can separate us from the love of God.”

But that didn’t stop the debate.

This would be funny if it were not so sad. On the floor of General Conference they were actually debating whether they believed the central affirmation of Paul’s theology.

One delegate from Liberia argued that, “Putting that in there is telling us as Christians that our belief and our practice do not separate us, and that can be far from the truth because then we deny God’s judgment at the end of the ages.” A delegate from Florida argued that Paul was not talking about everyone, he was only talking about “those who are in Christ Jesus.”

But a narrow reading of Paul is just that. And it goes against the inclusive sweep of Paul’s understanding of God’s grace.

One of the deep ironies in the debate is that those who claim to believe the Bible literally (that is a generalization, of course) were willing to sacrifice a literal reading of Romans 8 in order to preserve a literal understanding of a few verses in Leviticus.

In the end, they decided that Paul was right and “nothing can separate us from the love of God.” I’m sure the Apostle was relieved. But as I said earlier, it was closer than you might think; the amendment carried by a vote of 532 to 414.

More Thoughts on the Birth Control Debate

Each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. This I say by way of concession, not of command. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind.I Corinthians 7:2-7

The Apostle Paul is regularly criticized for having a bad attitude toward women, and for infecting Christianity with it. As a long time fan of Paul’s theology, I have spent many hours defending Paul’s views with friends and colleagues. And just for the record, I want to say again that many of the worst “anti-female” passages attributed to Paul were not actually written by him. And we need to take all of it in context.

But compared to the sentiments expressed in the recent debates about health care and birth control, Paul sounds like the voice of reason, even after two thousand years. Within the covenant of marriage, he argues, the satisfaction of sexual desire is not a sin, and married couples should not withhold that pleasure from each other. And note exactly what he says, “Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again.”
One is hard pressed to conjure up an argument against birth control from Paul’s perspective.

In the conflict between Roman Catholic agencies and institutions and the requirement of the Affordable Care Act, that employee health insurance provide free coverage for birth control prescriptions, the church has argued that as a matter of religious freedom it should be allowed to deny that coverage to women. Religious freedom is enshrined in the first amendment to our constitution, and it is cornerstone of who we are as Americans. But that is not the last word. This is a real healthcare issue for women, as well as a serious family issue.

I wrote earlier about how similar coverage is already mandated in 28 states and many Roman Catholic institutions already comply with those mandates.

In one of the doomsday arguments against the regulations, opponents raised the specter of Catholic Charities being “forced” to close and thereby putting a giant hole in our social safety net. There is no doubt that Catholic Charities is a major supplier of social services to the poorest people in our nation, and they deserve our thanks for that ministry. But we should note that of their $4.67 billion annual budget (in 2010), $2.9 billion (62%) came from federal grants. Only $140 million came directly from Diocesan churches. The rest came from in-kind gifts, investments, community campaigns, and program fees.

And one more thing to think about: The Roman Catholic agencies in question already provide coverage for Viagra. It is not surprising that many women’s groups see the whole argument as profoundly anti-female.

We Don't Know How to Pray

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.Romans 8:26-27
Yesterday in worship, as we were sharing our celebrations in preparation for our prayer time, one of our folks gave thanks that he was leading in a family football pool organized by another member of the church. This led me to share my dismay that it appeared that the Steelers would be playing our Patriots next week. “I’ll be praying for Tim Tebow,” I said, “but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Obviously, our worship service is fairly casual.

It was all in good fun. Though I did worry a little that someone might think I actually prayed about football games. And I worried a little more after Denver pulled off what seemed a miraculous win.

But in a larger sense, it got me thinking about prayer. It is the most common and probably also the most misunderstood of Christian practices.

In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul makes an amazing confession. He says that we do not know how to pray.

Although the Gospels had not been written when Paul wrote his letters, it is almost certain that he would have known the story of the disciples asking Jesus to teach them how to pray. And he would have known the prayer that Jesus taught them, which we call “The Lord’s Prayer.” And he would have known all of the Jewish prayers by heart and used them daily.

But Paul is talking about something that is much deeper than the words we use. He is talking about the nature of prayer itself.

In his wonderful sermon on this text, Paul Tillich explains that, “According to Paul, it is humanly impossible. This we should never forget when we pray: We do something humanly impossible. We talk to somebody who is not somebody else, but who is nearer to us than we ourselves are. We address somebody who can never become an object of our address because he is always subject, always acting, always creating. We tell something to Him who knows not only what we tell Him but also all the unconscious tendencies out of which our conscious words grow. This is the reason why prayer is humanly impossible.”
From this insight into the impossibility of prayer, Paul gives us a mysterious answer. God intercedes for us. It is God to whom we pray, and it is God who prays through us. Paul gives us a picture, which is absurd if we take it literally, but profoundly true if we understand the symbolism. God intercedes for us before God. Through us, God speaks to Godself.

Like most pastors, I work hard to craft a pastoral prayer for Sunday worship. I want it to be profound and poetic and moving. Parts of the prayer are intercessory, meaning that in a formal sense we “intercede” for one another before God.

But in a deeper sense, the language of public prayer is for the congregation rather than for God. What we hope is that the words we use will help individuals open themselves to God in prayer. The words themselves are not the prayer; they are the invitation to prayer. The real prayer is what happens “when the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”