Things I Learned from Summer Vacation

1.  Take holiday.  I didn't last summer. I had just moved to a new church, so I decided to put on my Superman cape and grind it out.  If you had seem me in the middle of winter you'd know how unwise a decision that was.  Holiday and holy days - same thing.  Worth taking.  I've made that mistake twice in my life - when I moved to Saint John's and when I moved to Covenant.  I won't make that mistake again.

2.  Sleep.  It's amazing how my view of life changes when I go from 4-6 hrs. of sleep a night to 9-10 hrs.  What, then, must I do in my "regular" life to make vacation rest a part of it?

3.  Play.  By play, I mean be play-full.  Be of a playful spirit.  I know only too well the rap placed on me by those (even those who love me) that I'm too serious.  I don't know where that comes from (yes, I do--thanks, Dad), but playfulness leads to joyfulness and joyfulness lets you handle whatever is happening in life from a different perspective.  What play-full thing did I do this year that was different than any other?  Karoake night at Sandestin, baby.  It was a blast.  Yes there is video, and no, you can't see it (well, maybe...if you ask me nice).

4.  Be With Friends.  If this past year had done nothing more than allowing me to be involved again into the life of one of my best friends, Tim - it would have been enough.  I've known him since I was 15.  We churched together, roomed together in a first apartment, he was my best man, and I officiated his wedding.  And in this past year, I buried his dear mother, and both of his in-laws.  Tim and family are members of Covenant (used to be Underwood, but that's another story--feel free to browse the blog for my opinions on that one), and we have been able to be a part of each other's lives after so many years just as it was when we hung out all the time.  I was Tim's friend long before I was his pastor, and I'll be his friend long after I've been moved on down the trail.  Tim and family were in Florida while we were.  It was a good thing.  Together with other Underwood friends, Jodie, Michelle and Halle, opportunities to fellowship, talk and play were far more abundant than in years past.  Being with family is always good.  Being with family and friends makes good become great.

5.  Exercise.  There's a 2.1 mile circle that encompasses the area that we live when we're there.  It's not a ton of miles, but going from nothing to everyday, in the heat of the day was good.  No question, I needs must incorporate that back into the rhythm of life I lead at home.  Has to happen.

6.  Spend Every Afternoon You Can on a Beach.  I know some folk can take or leave a beach.  I get it.  And there are times of the day I can leave it, too.  But late afternoon, from about 5 to sundown...made for me.  The ocean breeze blowing in.  The seagulls looking for something to snack from what others left, the more tolerable sun beaming down.  Magic.  As the days of my vacation moved from one into the next,  what I to notice was a bit of a congregation that would gather at about that time everyday to take their seat and listen to the liturgy of the ocean in worshipful praise for the God of all creation who makes all things new, even tired, worn out preachers who need some re-creation.

7.  Eat crabcakes at Louis Louis.  Nuff said.

Getting Ready to Rock This Summer

Two worship services of drastically different styles offer plenty of challenge each Sunday. It is also an opportunity. For this Summer, we're focusing on The Solid Rock. Now with my Crosswalk service, it'll be a visitation with some great music from the 60's and 70's through which some of the themes of peace, justice, life, love and relationship with the Holy can be known is a little different way. Yes, great music that I like...great music that I picked. Those of you who know me can see that one a mile away. And music that the Crosswalk Worship Band will pull off in fine form. Hope to even sit in on a tune or two. Obviously, our focus in the Sanctuary will take a different tack. We'll go old time Gospel hymns, there--and when I get to it, I feel sure a "cool" preview will bubble up. But for now, with Crosswalk, hit play, and allow yourself to be teased!

Preach On!

I'm going to the Festival of Homiletics next week.

I've been twice before. This year, I return to Nashville. A place important to my journey.

FoH is a gathering of the some of the masters at the craft of preaching. There'll be workshops and such.

But I go for the worship. I'm not there so much to take notes or steal ideas, although I'm always open to new ideas. I go to soak in the worship experience in which I'm not in charge. I participate as a congregant. It speaks to me.

I've written before about who is pastor to the pastor? It's a tough question to answer.

Who preaches to the preacher is equally difficult.

Very often I'm found quoting from some of the folks who serve on the faculty of what I call the Johnny Jeffords Spiritual Academy. Nouwen & Buechner. If they wrote it I've read it. And then there are names like Coffin, Brueggemann, Forbes, Taylor & Craddock - with whom I had the honor of sharing the pulpit. What they say speaks to me. They aren't the only ones --but they most certainly do.

Like any person who goes to Church seeking a word--of truth, of hope, of challenge, of love and of grace, we who pastor and preach need that, too. So I'm going--gladly and earnestly.

The events of recent days in Nashville impacts the trip only to the degree that the reality of damage sits in front of us as we gather. Alterations in the agenda allow the 1,500 of us who are gathering to offer assistance in the damaged areas. So, a spontaneous mission trip sits out there, too.

One further benchmark of note: I'll be part of a mini-Vandy class reunion. This month, 20 years ago, I graduated from The Divinity School at Vanderbilt. A few of my classmates will be at FoH, and others still live and serve in Nashville. It will be good to reconnect with folks with whom I apprenticed long ago--to see where they are, what they're doing.

I suspect a post or two while there will bubble up.

But what am I up to next week? I'm going to Church!

Six

Six years ago this very morning, around 4:30 a.m., my sister in law called with the news of my brother's death.  As it was today, it was a Saturday.  What happened between that Saturday and Monday afternoon is burned in my memory.  I don't dwell on it, but there are moments such as today when it's unavoidable.

My thoughts of Jimmy this week have been of what was.  The kid I knew.  The pain in the neck he enjoyed being for me.  The attention and love he long sought from me that while present, was never quite as much as either of us needed...and yet, we were both too damn proud to admit it.

I've written extensively about Jimmy and processing my grief in the years since his death...they're all labelled "Jimmy."  For this year, I pause, remember my kid brother, and shake my head that it's been six years.  He'd be 40 this year, and I would have so enjoyed rubbing that in.

Maundy Thursday 2010 - "No Greater Love: A Life Made Sacred (Sacrum Facere)"

I'm not bringing a homily this year at Maundy Thursday.

First time in many a year.

The constructs of our worship experience tonight really lent (no pun here) itself to music, action, ancient words read and meditated upon.

But I'm always drawn to this night. Before I had a theological lexicon to describe it, this night held a singular importance for me.

Like my Jewish friends who are celebrating their liberation from another time through Passover, I always feel like asking "Why is this night different that all others?"

Long before I found a blog to reflect aloud for those who choose to read it, this homily has been in me. I continue to return to it as my Credo for who Jesus is, the nature of faith, and the profound challenge of discipleship.

It is the "basic sauce," the "roux," if you will, that when any of a number of contextual ingredients are added, suits what I have come to believe about this significant day.

A simple search of this blog will reveal the various iterations of this homily in the past five or six years.

Last year, in 2009, I engaged in a significant reworking for two predominant reasons. The first was the introduction of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan's book The Last Week, which I continue to hold in highest regard for framing the central thesis. They gave words to my long felt sense of Holy Week. I count it as a means of grace.

The second reason came as a result of my last Maundy Thursday with a congregation I had led for eight years. I've come to think of this as my Valedictory Address. It's no "The Queen is Dead," by any stretch, but it is me, and it was something I wanted to be sure I said as clearly as ever as I prepared to take my leave.

This year, even though not preached, I continue the discipline of living with it to see what is being pushed in me and what needs to be shared.

Here it is.

There are moments in life when the actions we take, the engagement of our lives with the world around us reveal something about us, whether we’re conscious of it or not. We can talk all day about who we are and what we believe – but there’s nothing more revealing or indicting than action or inaction.

Conscious awareness of our role, place and motivation in life, and the relationships that ebb and flow in the slipstream of our existence is best defined as “mindfulness.” Taken from wisdom of the eastern religions, it is that capacity for us to know that wherever we go, there we are - -and thanks to John Kabat Zinn, the western world is the beneficiary of understanding a spiritual state that belongs to all people of faith.

In times of greatest moment – to act or not to act - - “to be or not to be - that is the question.”

Act with haste, that is, without prayerful discernment seeking guidance from trusted voices, and action becomes an end in itself. Those who yearn to be seen as the hero who sweeps in and saves the day act hastily.

Ask anyone who has been caught up in the aftermath of one’s hasty pursuit of hero worship and they’ll tell you such action may look good on the surface, but there is collateral damage aplenty.

Is there compassion or consideration in the face of collateral damage, or, willingness to put aside being the hero for the common good?

No.

Inevitably, collateral damage, in whatever form it comes, is considered an acceptable loss, and the price of doing business. The end always justifies the means.

Others live with perpetual inaction.

Able to articulate and argue relevant points of whatever their issue is with passion – they fail to act. They feed so much on the energy generated by the problem itself so that their motivation to enact a remedy, is muted by the fear that if the problem is solved, the “stuff” that feeds their lives is gone.

They know the issue.

They know the problem.

But they are crippled to do anything about it.

A vicious cycle, that. Indeed, it is pitiful.

Those who refuse to forgive a wrong because to do so would extinguish the rage that fuels the hellish fire of their every day – choose perpetual inaction. Like the hostage who begins to side with very one who has held them bondage and would do them harm, we, who choose inaction to make right a wrong, or to forgive, suffer from a Stockholm Syndrome of the soul - - loving our pain and anger because it’s what we know. Being liberated from it scares us to death. We love our chains more than being free.

“Repent, and believe in the Gospel,” Jesus would say.
"Repent." "Believe."
"Take" up your cross and "follow."

Action words.

It’s the difference between saying you’re a Christian and actually being a companion of Jesus wherever that leads.

Action and inaction. The transcendent truth of either approach to life is self defining and a prophecy perpetually self-fulfilling.

Maundy Thursday is one of those days when the abstract and absolute, the flesh and the spirit, the universal and the particular collide. It is one of those occasions where “the rubber hits the road.” Here, at the end of Lent and the start of the Triduum, the Great Three Days, it reveals through action the character of the One who draws us into this worship space tonight. It confronts us with the real life, real time implications of what a life made sacred looks like. It makes us look at Jesus’ life and consider what we’re doing with our own.

Is life made sacred because it just is…or is life made sacred by what one does with it?

So, action, these actions give meaning to what Jesus has taught. They give meaning to what we believe. They make all this Jesus business real – incarnate.

On this night we focus on an action of Jesus found only in the 4th gospel. The Synoptics don’t have it. John, historically considered the last of the canonical gospels written, has a particular agenda – the writer has a bias, and his bias is always for Jesus – his life, his teaching, and the nature of the Christ that has always been.

Only John has this text – Jesus, at Passover, after sharing table fellowship, takes upon himself an action that will be self-defining hereon, as it will be for all of us who carry his name.

He, the one called, Rabbi, Teacher, Lord, Messiah, Christ – comes now to assume the role of the menial laborer – literal dirty work is not beneath him – he embraces it...he love us in it.

It defines him. He takes a towel, a basin and a pitcher – and washes his disciples feet.

But why?

Rarely in our observance of Christian liturgy do you find something so profoundly intimate as the washing of feet. Maybe that’s why it’s not a sacrament (which it should be), there’s really no way to observe this liturgy with integrity without literally touching someone.

It’s too close, too intimate. It’s not “churchy.”

Getting on our knees and taking off shoes, using water, towels and basins, it’s beneath the dignity of our erudite gathering.

To which I say, “right.” It is.

But it is supremely of Christ.

And if we are going to be “of Christ,” with integrity, then tonight, our action or inaction is, guess what? Dare I say it again? Self-Defining.

And maybe that’s what all this dramatic fuss is about this Holy Thursday night and there following into the Great Three Days. If nothing else, we observe integrity at work. That’s an awe inspiring thing. For to live with integrity is joyful, because in it we are complete. We are fully what we’ve been created to become.

Don’t forget, though, that just because we live with integrity, even joyfully, does not mean our work is pleasant, or that we’re giddy about it.

To do so was not a choice absent other options. Think of those presented to Jesus in the wilderness temptations, – No, this was a matter of integrity. He did this thing, both in the upper room with his disciples, as well as walk the Via Dolorosa because that’s who he is.

To have done anything other than to be a servant, than to identify with the suffering of humankind by embracing the cross, would have been to have missed his moment – the moment when his action defined who he was.

This is what a life made sacred looks like:

12 ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. John 15.12-17

Another way of seeing this night might be this. Jesus did not miss his moment and he’s imploring us not to miss ours. That our lives are gifts, to be sure, but they are only made sacred when we enact self-giving love as every moment's measure.

Look. Ministry is hard.

Giving yourself away is hard. Following Jesus to where ministry leads you is hard.

It is counterintuitive to everything innately part of our being that cries out for self interest and self protection.

Placing yourself in the role of servant and not hero is tough. Doing ultimate good without lusting for credit is extraordinarily difficult.

If it were easy, wouldn’t more folks be doing it?

Instead, too many of us play at Church, play at following Jesus, use our religious pursuits as a contrivance of convenience rather than a covenantal commitment.

Listen, people. To live with integrity or not is far more in our control that we'd care to admit.

It’s in your grasp, sisters and brothers – right here, right now.

Jesus gathers with us in this room, as he has done with his companions for millennia and says, “Here’s who I am, here’s what I’m prepared to do, here are the depths I’m prepared to plunge – for you.”

How far are you willing to go? Could it be that tonight it is at least to declare that “no greater love have I” than to give myself away, even sacrificially, because of love?

What we do tonight, through bread and cup, is a liturgy you have repeated many, many times. May it be, however, that tonight you see beyond your own action of getting up and coming down here and partaking Eucharist.

Consider and embrace the life made sacred because of what he did…made his life sacred, for you.

For the Season of Easter...Henri Nouwen's "In the Name of Jesus"

There is no voice better to help us hear clearly the the call of Jesus, and what the life of the disciple of the Crucified and Risen Christ looks like than Henri Nouwen.

His powerful little book, In the Name of Jesus, will be our guide, as well as the post resurrection conversation between Jesus and Peter, as recorded in the Gospel of John. Share with Lora Jean and me as we re-read this oft read book, and find new meaning for living faithfully during this upcoming season of Easter.

"Come One, Come All to the Greatest Show On Earth" or "Glenn Beck Is an Idiot"

Wow.

I haven't even been on my blog in so long I forgot my login.

I wonder what that means?

Hmmm.

Anyoldway, I'm back at it. In the months since I last posted anything, much has happened.

Let me, in short order, address a few things.

First things first.

I don't watch Glenn Beck. Heck, until I came home from work one day and my father in law was at the house watching Fox News, I didn't even know that my TV would go to that channel... :)

I know and I love a lot of people who watch GOPTV, I mean, Fox News. That's fine, enjoy. You're certainly free to do that. I prefer to watch my fiction on other channels. Ain't America great!

I'm usually of the mind to ignore bombastic pomposity. But not this.

About Mr. Beck's recent comments on "social justice," the Church and the Gospel, anyone who honestly believes the drivel he has spewed about what is at the heart of the Christian mission and tending to the least of these, and feels compelled to leave any church that preaches it...see you later.

It matters not if you're right or left on the political or theological spectrum, his read of the Gospel is completely and utterly wrong.

It is not merely a matter of opinion. He's free to have one. But you know what opinions are like.

He is just plain wrong. I think he knows it, too. Truth is, I don't really care what he thinks. He's just one of many TV talking head blowhards who make their bones on keeping the pot stirred up. He is a 21st century carnival barker who is charismatic enough to convince you to come see the show, only to walk away later with your wallet a bit lighter and a bottle of snake oil in your hands.

My concern is for those who watch him and confuse commentary with fact.

Now, I am admittedly not on the right wing side of theological or political perspectives.

Never have been.

What is more inherently resonant in my spirit can best be described in the title of one of William Sloane Coffin's books, "The Heart is a Little to the Left."

But many of my friends and colleagues who are of that persuasion understand as do those of my friends and colleagues on the left that Matthew 25, Luke 4, Acts 2-4 (just for starters) are unequivocal about what matters to God, to Jesus and to any who would be so audacious as to admit that they are Companions of Christ.

In fact, it has been my experience as a pastor that it is such a clear understanding of this mission that best bridges the wide range of theological and political perspectives. There's something about being mandated by Jesus to tend to the least of these, or reading the Hebrew Prophets (Micah 6, anyone?), that serves as the common ground that brings the Church together.

I know of what I speak. I've served congregations that work at the conscious choice of successfully bridging the most conservative and liberal of people around the mandates of the Gospel.

I've lived through a couple of natural disasters in which the widest range of the Church rolled up their sleeves and worked together not for their own sake, but because they understood that this is what Christians do.

The only thing Christians are called to hold in common are the teachings and mandates of Jesus, each of which invariably ends up with love of God expressed through love of neighbor, especially the least among us. We can approach our lives and our politics from varying perspectives, to be sure, but in the end, it is the heart and mind of Christ that trumps all.

And when it doesn't--it's idolatry.

My experience tells me that right and left need each other. They'd never admit it, but surely it must be so.

When left to their own devices, there is no check and no balance. And when we loose our balance, it could be because we've contracted a case of spiritual vertigo.

Any with ears to hear, let them hear: to co-opt Beck's rhetoric and act upon it as if it's of Christ or for the Christian Church is blasphemy. I rarely use such language, but because Beck's disciples seem to follow every little word that comes out of his mouth, such people need to decide who is their Teacher on this one--

Jesus or Glenn.