Rogue Reverend

It Was All Saints’ Day

Yesterday, November 1, was All Saints’ Day. We celebrated at Richmond Mennonite Fellowship by bringing a memento of one of our Saints to the service.

The sermon was rather different (surprise, surprise!), and I quoted from one Ted talk by Sir Ken Robinson, starting at minute 15.09. Robinson tells the story of Gillian Lynne, a choreographer whose grade school teachers (in the 1930’s) thought that she had a learning disorder. Gillian’s mother took her to a doctor, who listened to the symptoms, and asked Mrs. Lynne to talk with him privately. Instead of talking, they turned to watch Gillian, who got up to dance to a radio that was on in the room.

“Gillian isn’t sick,” the doctor said, “she’s a dancer.” Gillian’s mother took her to dance class, where Gillian proclaims, “We walked into this room and it was full of people like me. People who couldn’t sit still. People who had to move to think.”

I believe the church should be like the doctor: noticing. And like the mother: fostering passion.

Then we listened to 5 minutes of another Ted talk. Eve Ensler spoke on happiness. Go to minute 15:41. Really. Go listen. I’ll wait.

Eve says that the Vagina Monologues “has taught me this really simple thing, which is that happiness exists in action, it exists in telling the truth and saying what your truth is, and it exists in giving away what you want the most.”

We have to work to identify our passion, the thing we want the most, that we have to give away.

We then talked about our saints. sharing our mementos, and thinking about them, “What was the thing they gave away?”

I talked about my saint, Barbara Watts, during this time. The memento I shared was a hymnal from Southside Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and hymn number 398, “In the Garden.” Barbara sang this favorite hymn at my ordination.

The refrain is, “And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own; and the joy we share, as we tary there, none other have ever known.” Sure, it’s bad theology, but it’s one of my favorites.

Barbara’s gift, her passion, was attention. She paid attention to all the people she loved in such a complete way: cards, letters, calls. Remembrances, birthday wishes, gifts, Barbara paid attention. I’m so grateful for her model in my love, and for being the object of some of that love.

After sharing our saints, without a dry eye in sight, we shared communion. We communed with our saints who are gone, but also with those who will someday consider us saints. What would be the passion they would see?

Jesus took the wine and the bread, very common elements, and made them holy. The saints in our lives, who were very human, shed the light of sacredness in our lives. How would we do the same in others’ lives?

If I Were the Architect of the Church. A sermon.

This sermon was inspired by a spoken word poem at Ted.com, called Rives Controls the Internet. The sermon, which was done at a rapid pace like spoken word, was followed by communion where the communicants took the phrase, “If I were the architect of the Church” and said how they would make it theirs.

If I were the architect of the new Church, not the old church, we’d have no tired old Sunday school and Training Union and Wednesday night suppers and Stewardship Sundays and Deacons meetings and church councils and capital campaigns and mission trips,

But it’s new church, with love and care and hope and more love and care and hope and then a little more love and care and hope mixed in. The only thing I’d take from the old model is worship and a lot of fried chicken.

If I were the architect of the new Church, no one would get God wrong. In fact, Church wouldn’t tell about God. You would instead tell the Church about the kind of God you serve. And your God would overlap with my God, in some very lovely ways, but it would be okay if your God was different from my God.

If I were the architect of the new Church, the Pastor would no longer be the holder of secrets. You’d never keep to yourself that you’re going to lose your house, that you’d had an abortion, that you’re going through a rough patch in your marriage, that you’re gay, that you’ve lost your job, that you’re waiting on test results, that you’re sad, or lonely. The pastor’s job would be to help you share your secrets. Because the pastor knows that you’re not the only person going through what you’re going through.

If I were the architect of the church, you would know that the balance in your checking account doesn’t determine your worth as a human being.

If I were the architect of the new Church, the budget would read so differently. We’d pay for salaries and space, then we’d have a budget line where everybody wrote about all the wonderful things they were doing with their money so that we would know that our church was making a difference in the world. One person would be feeding the hungry, one person would be digging water wells, one person would be buying cows, and another fixing the ozone layer. Our missions budget would be through the roof, but it would be through your roof, not ours, because it would come out of your budget, not ours, and we’d be changing the world through our actions.

If I were the architect of the church, we wouldn’t mess up our children. We would understand that our kids are going to grow up with some gaps, but as a community, we would help fill those gaps. And when our children became different than us, we’d get to see how great they are, through the eyes of the community, because communities see better than individuals. And when our children grew up and turned back to us, saying, “You messed me up!” we’d smile, know that they needed to say it, apologize, because they need to hear it, and offer ourselves compassion. And we’d extend compassion to our kids.

If I were the architect of the church, we wouldn’t have marketing campaigns, we wouldn’t target people, we wouldn’t need to pay for advertising. There’d be no us and them.

If I were the architect of the new Church, you’d be the expert on theology, on life, and on God.

Oh! Wait!

You already are! But that’s just it, isn’t it? I’m not the architect of the church. You are!

Only Notice (a sermon)

I think I have mentioned to you all the Ted talks that I’ve been listening to… TED talks are 18 minute talks about technology, entertainment, and design, and they are people who are tops in their fields.

Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence gave a talk on compassion. He tells the story of a group of divinity students were given a practice sermon. Half of them were to preach on the story of the Good Samaritan. The other half on some other text. As they went from one building to another to give their sermon, they saw a man bent over in pain. The experiment was to see if they would stop to help the person.

Did it make a difference if the people were preaching on the Good Samaritan text? Nope.

Social Neuroscientists have found that our default wiring is to help. “If we attend to the other person, we automatically feel with them.” So, why don’t we help?

They were in a hurry.
They were worried about what was coming up next.
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Who Am I?

Some days, I don’t know who I am.

Audacia Ray wrote a post at Feministe this week about American Sex Worker Activist Projects and mentioned Star Light. She wrote, “There is also the now sadly defunct Starlight Ministries, an outreach ministry to exotic dancers that was totally awesome and not in any way a creepy paternalistic shaming religious group.”

Ever since I resigned from Star Light Ministries, the organization I founded as an outreach to sex workers, I have struggled with my concept of who I am. It’s not so much who I am inside, but who I am outside. What do I tell people I “do for a living?” How do I express my passion for people deemed “unacceptable” by the Church, by society at large, by whatever social circle I seem to find myself in, and still be “just a pastor.”

The church that I pastor is amazing. They are smart, funny, easy-going, committed, and so accepting. I really love being around them in a way I haven’t felt in church in a long time. And my love for them seems to grow.

And yet, there’s me. Who am I? WHO AM I?

Many, many years ago I read a story in a book of Russian fables about a student who goes to Minsk to study. But he’s miserable. So he searches out a hermit Rabbi in the woods and says, “When I was in St. Petersburg, I prayed. I read books. I studied. I was happy. Then I moved to Minsk. Here, all I can do is cry. Tears is all I have.” The Rabbi answered, “Maybe what God wants from you now is tears.”

So maybe me not knowing who I am right now is precisely what God wants from me.

What the Bible Means to Me

Following my second sermon in a series on Romans yesterday, one of my church members asked me a question. I can’t get the exact wording, but the question was something like this:

Why do you preach from the Bible? Do you really think that we should use it as our baseline for understanding why we do what we do? Can’t we, just as easily, use reality and preach from there?

My answer is probably way too involved for a brief conversation following church. I decided to post it here.

I have an interesting relationship to the Bible. First, I absolutely love it. I want to read it, study it in the original language, preach from it, orientate my life to it. Second, I could know God without it. You get that? It reveals to me how THOSE people related to God. It reveals some about God’s nature. But it’s certainly not all of it. Nor does it explain the context in which I live today. So, while I love it, I am also cognizant of it’s limitations.

As I see it, the Bible is the story of a people (actually, two peoples) trying to understand their relationship with God. In the Hebrew Bible, we start with cosmic beginnings then to the particulars of the patriarchs and matriarchs, wanting to follow God, and all the while, being VERY human. Wow. Isn’t that my story?

Then with the gospels, it’s the teachings. The little phrases that Jesus says, that challenge me every day. “Love your enemies.” “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?”“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.” Every day and in every way, the life and teachings of Jesus challenge me to move out of my boundaries.

But I have a different relationship with the Epistles. Especially Paul’s Epistles. Let me see if I can explain this…

Consider Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. It’s a wonderful letter written to a specific group of people during a specific time. MLK writes in the style of Paul, and there are some very moving parts to his letter. There are some things that have relevance to my life.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Definitely a statement that has universal implications. However, some things are not so relevant.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

The specificity of this statement has very little to do with me, with my life in Richmond, 46 years after the letter was written. Imagine, we take Paul’s letter, written nearly 2000 years ago, and try to make each one of his statements universal. I don’t believe that they are universally applicable.

So, what does the Bible mean to me? I like this quote (I think it’s from Marcus Borg), “The Bible isn’t true, but it’s real.” I think I know God (not wholly, really). I know God through people, through nature, through my experience. The Bible helps me, especially in this Judeo-Christian context in which I live, to orient my life to this One who I follow: God shown most fully through Christ.