Currents and Swirls and Gratitude

As tropical storm Nicole approached us and swept by, I've been appreciating our planet anew. I spend much of my life in structures made by human hands, which sometimes leads me to forget to be grateful for our wonderful planet, made by God. But in the days when a tropical system approaches, the planet does so much to command our attention: we see amazing cloud formations, we can see the circulation of air currents as we watch those clouds, we often enjoy a day or two of blazingly beautiful weather just before the storm crashes in on us.

Even the storm itself can be an awe-inspiring thing. We watch bands of rain and wind sweep across us, and then we wait in the calm for the next band. We marvel at the capacity of trees and shrubs to bend in the wind, and we pray that they not break. If the storm allows, we might make it to the beach, where the ocean roars and reminds us that it's not some trifling plaything.

Human made things also take my breath away and remind me of the grandeur of our creator. As the storm approaches, I'm ever more grateful for satellites and radars, which help us know what's out there and coming our way. I can become entranced by these images, beautiful swirls that will spell out mercy or doom.

We've been lucky so far during this hurricane season, and I say this with a bit of guilt, because I know that not everyone has been so lucky. I say it with a bit of fear too. October can be the most fearsome month in hurricane season for us down here in South Florida. Storms blow up out of nowhere and in no time; the forecast calls for sunny skies, but before you know it, you've got a hurricane overhead. October storms behave erratically. The Caribbean Sea is still a hot cauldron, even as the Atlantic begins to cool.

Hurricane season reminds me of how little of my life is really in my control, and the idea that I'm in charge is such an illusion. I can no more control many of the currents (economic, health, political) that affect my life than I can control the weather.

I could live in denial of my essential powerlessness; many people do. I could pretend that benign powers bend to my will as I cast my votes and save my money and do all the things which may or may not lead me into healthy old age. I could eat my vegetables while I salt away money and try to believe it will all work out. Or I could become that sneering cynical person who is so tiring in social settings. Or I could become comatose with hopelessness.

Happily, I have another option. I can trust in God, who has promised that my needs will be met. I can trust that this creator, who has provided such a glorious planet, has not left us all alone to the whims of currents that we can barely perceive.

Meditation on this Sunday's Gospel

The Readings for Sunday, October 3, 2010


First Reading: Habakkuk 1:1-4;2:1-4

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Lamentations 1:1-6

Psalm: Psalm 37:1-10 (Psalm 37:1-9 NRSV)

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Lamentations 3:19-26

Psalm (Alt.): Psalm 137 (Psalm 137 (Semi-continuous) NRSV)

Second Reading: 2 Timothy 1:1-14

Gospel: Luke 17:5-10


Perhaps the Gospels of past weeks and months have left you feeling depressed. You have begun to realize that you will never succeed at this Christianity thing. You can't even remember to make a donation, much less tithe regularly. You'd like to invite the poor to your dinner table, if you ever had time to eat dinner yourself, and you wonder if you still get Christianity Points if you invite the poor to dinner, but pick up that dinner from the deli. You'd like to look out for widows and orphans, but happily, you don't know of any. And frankly, most of the week, you don't have a spare moment to even ponder these things at all.

This week's Gospel offers encouraging news. It reminds us that belief has the power of a seed. As fewer of us plant anything, we may lose the power of that metaphor. But think of how inert a seed seems. It's hard to believe that anything can come from that little pod. And then we plunk it into the earth, where it seems even more dead--no sun, no light, no air. But the dark earth is what it needs, along with water, maybe some fertilizer if the soil is poor, and time. And with some luck, and more time, eventually we might all enjoy a tree. And not only us, but generations after us--that tree will outlive us all.

Christ reminds us that faith is like that seed. And the good news is that we don't have to have faith in abundance. A tiny seed's worth can create a world of wonders. And it's good to remember that we don't have to have consistent faith. We live in a world that encourages us to think that we'll eventually arrive at a place of perfect behavior: we'll exercise an hour a day, we'll forsake all beverages but water, we'll pray every hour, we'll never eat sugar or white flour again, we'll cook meals at home and observe regular mealtimes. We want lives of perfect balance, and we feel deep disappointment with ourselves when we can't achieve that, even when we admit that we'd need ten extra hours in the day to achieve that.

Jesus reminds us to avoid that trap of perfectionist expectations. People who have gone before us on this Christian path remind us of that too. Think of Mother Theresa. Her letters reveal that she spent most of her life feeling an absence of God. But that emotion didn't change her behavior. She tried to reveal the light of Christ to the most poor and outcast, and was largely successful. She didn't feel like she was successful, but she didn't get bogged down in those feelings of self-recrimination. And even when she did, she kept doing what she knew God wanted her to do.

Many of us might have seen Mother Theresa as a spiritual giant. We might feel dismayed to realize that she spent much of her life having a dark night of the soul kind of experience.

On the contrary, we should feel comforted. Maybe these letters show that she wasn't a spiritual giant. And look at what she was able to do.

Or maybe we should revise our definition of a spiritual giant. If you read the journals, letters, and private papers of many twentieth-century people who have been seen as spiritual giants (Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Madeleine L'Engle, Dorothy Day), you'll see that feelings of spiritual desolation are quite common. The fact that we have these feelings--does that mean that God has abandoned us?

Of course not. Those of us who have lived long enough have come to realize that our feelings and emotions are often not good indicators of the reality of a situation. Our feelings and emotions are often rooted in the fact that we haven't had enough sleep or the right kind of food.

The people who have gone before us remind us of the importance of continuing onward, even when we feel despair. Christ reminds us that we just need a tiny kernel of belief. All sorts of disciplines remind us that the world changes in tiny increments; huge changes can be traced back to small movements. Your belief, and the actions that come from your belief, can bear witness in ways you can scarcely imagine. Perfection is not required--just a consistent progress down the path.

Week 2 of Bible Improv Sunday School Experiment

On Sunday, we tackled the Adam and Eve story--with mimes! We had some high school students who have done miming in a semi-professional way, along with a mom who had once done some theological clowning in addition to her days as a mime. The other children got to pretend to be trees and animals in the garden. I was the narrator.

I continue to like this interactive way of doing Sunday School. I think the participants will remember the stories more for having been part of them. I also like the intergenerational approach. I know that in many churches, there are scarcely enough children for each class: one first grader, 3 fourth graders, a pre-schooler here and there--how can a Christian Ed program work with such small numbers? How do we find enough volunteers?

Happily, our experiment has revolving leadership, so it's easier to find volunteers. I haven't often volunteered for Sunday School because I travel fairly frequently at certain times of the year, and finding a sub can be a problem. But with our current program, I volunteered to be in charge for 2 Sundays, and if I'm in town, I show up to help on other Sundays.

I suspect that the days of bustling Sunday Schools, where every grade/age has 10 or more students, are over. We need more models like the one we're creating, so I'll continue to write about our efforts here, as well as thinking about other ways to do Sunday School successfully.

Last Thoughts on Sunday's Lessons

Our pastor preached on the Gospel lesson, the story of the rich man and Lazarus. I don't blame him. I'd have found it irresistible. He even used it in the children's sermon. Several times throughout the morning, he came back to the statistic that 1 billion people would go to bed hungry Sunday night.

And Monday night and Tuesday night.

One billion people.

We've had decades of research that shows us that no one need go hungry. It's various structures that keep people hungry, not lack of food supply. We have food surpluses, which throughout human history is almost unheard of.

Our pastor took us back to the Lord's Prayer, where we pray for our communal daily bread. We are all inexorably linked. But like the rich man in the Gospel, so many of us are blind to the struggles of our fellow humans. We're not blind because we've never encountered Lazarus. We're blind because we choose to be blind.

The Good News: when we choose unwisely, God gives us a chance to choose again. Our blindness can be healed. We can be agents of grace and change.

Our pastor didn't go into the ways that we can be those agents, but I would have encouraged people to think about the distribution of their charitable dollars. After hearing scholars like Peter Singer tell us that our dollars go further in third world countries, I moved 1% of my charitable giving to Lutheran World Relief. Oxfam is another great charity that moves in similar ways: low administrative costs, great track record helping impoverished folks in the developing world.

And of course, that still leaves plenty of money to be spent here at home. Anyone who's ever participated in a feeding program can tell you about the glaring need on our doorsteps.

The Gospel is clear about the dangers of ignoring the poor. We ignore this message at our peril.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The lessons for Sunday, September 26, 2010:

First Reading: Amos 6:1a, 4-7

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

Psalm: Psalm 146

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16

Second Reading: 1 Timothy 6:6-19

Gospel: Luke 16:19-31


This Sunday, the Gospel returns to familiar themes with the story of Lazarus and the rich man. Lazarus is so poor that he hopes for crumbs from the rich man's table and has to tolerate the dogs licking his sores (or perhaps this is a form of early medicine). Lazarus has nothing, and the rich man has everything. When Lazarus dies, he goes to be with Abraham, where he is rewarded. When the rich man dies, he is tormented by all the hosts of Hades. He pleads for mercy, or just a drop of water, and he's reminded of all the times that he didn't take care of the poor. He asks for a chance to go back to warn his family, and he's told, "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead."

Maybe by now you're feeling a bit frustrated: week after week of reminders that we shouldn't get too comfortable with our worldly possessions. Maybe you suspect the Council who chose this common lectionary of readings of being just a tad socialist.

Yet those who study (and tabulate!) such things would remind us that economic injustice is one of the most common themes in the Bible. To hear the Christians who are most prominently in the media, you'd think that the Bible concerned itself with homosexuality.

Not true. In his book, God's Politics, Jim Wallis tells of tabulating Bible verses when he was in seminary: "We found several thousand (emphasis his) verses in the Bible on the poor and Gods' response to injustice. We found it to be the second most prominent theme in the Hebrew Scriptures Old Testament--the first was idolatry, and the two often were related. One of every sixteen verses in the New Testament is about the poor or the subject of money (mammon, as the gospels call it). In the first three (Synoptic) gospels it is one out of ten verses, and in the book of Luke, it is one in seven" (page 212).

And how often does the Bible mention homosexuality? That depends on how you translate the Greek and how you interpret words that have meanings that cover a wide range of sexual activity--but at the most, the whole Bible mentions homosexuality about twelve times.

If we take the Bible as the primary text of Christianity, and most of us do, the message is clear. God's place is with the poor and oppressed. The behavior that most offends God is treating people without love and concern for their well being--this interpretation covers a wide range of human activity: using people's bodies sexually with no concern for their humanity, cheating people, leaving all of society's destitute and despicable to fend for themselves, not sharing our wealth, and the list would be huge, if we made an all-encompassing list.

It might leave us in despair, thinking of all the ways we hurt each other, all the ways that we betray God. But again and again, the Bible reminds us that we are redeemable and worthy of salvation. Again and again, we see the Biblical main motif of a God who wants so desperately to see us be our best selves that God goes crashing throughout creation in an effort to remind us of all we can be.

Some prosperity gospel preachers interpret this motif of a God who wants us to be rich. In a way, they're right--God does want us to be rich. But God doesn't care about us being rich in worldly goods. Anyone who has studied history--or just opened their eyes in recent years--knows how quickly worldly goods can be taken away. But those of us who have dedicated our lives to forging whole human relationships and helping to usher in the Kingdom now and not later--those of us rich in love are rich indeed.

Sunday School Improv--First Day

We did our first Sunday School Improv on Sunday, and it went very well. We decided to start at the very beginning--creation! Or, to be more specific, the first Creation story, where God makes everything and declares it good, very good.

We asked for seven volunteers, and each volunteer would represent each day of creation. With guidance, they had to do something that represented the day. So, for the day where God creates rain, one of the children did a rain dance. On the day where God creates trees and other vegetarian, a boy stood in the Yoga tree pose. On the day where God creates creatures, a teenager led us through a singing of "The Itsy, Bitsy Spider."

Our narrator had recorded some sound effects, so every time the text said, "It was morning" a cock crowed. "It was evening"--cricket sounds. Every time God declared something good, half the room cheered. The other half of the room would cheer when God declared something bad--but God never declares anything bad. To me, that's the important message of the text: God never looks at a creation and says, "Blhh. This didn't turn out right at all. This is so ugly. I'm so stupid. How could I have thought this idea would work!" No, that inner critic that so many of us hear is not--NOT--the voice of God. God declares it all very good.

Everyone on Sunday seemed to have a really good time, youth and adults alike. Will children remember the story? We hope so. We hope that it comes alive for them, that they carry some of these seeds with them into their adult lives. And along the way, we can all have some improvisational fun.

Last Thoughts on Yesterday's Lessons

Our pastor chose to preach on the Amos text (8: 4-7), and I was glad he did. Our pastor is never finer than when he tackles issues of poverty and injustice. But I admit that I'm biased.

The strong message of the prophet still resonates, with its condemnation of those who trample on the needy and poor, those who are "buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat" (verse 6). I felt those prickles of discomfort; am I that rich person?

I certainly don't give away as much as I should. I haven't done as much as I could to give the poor an equal chance. I do much in the way of charity, but not as much in the way of justice, those practices that would make sure that everyone has enough. In my younger years, I did more. I need to meet that 19 year old Kristin again. If nothing else, I could write more letters to my legislators, those people who do have the power to affect the power structures (or does that just show how naive I am?).

Our pastor reminded us that as Christians, we are the voice of the prophet. And my, how our voices are needed in this current day of increasing poverty and increasing stratification.

Our pastor closed by reminding us that what caused the downfall of Israel was not idolatry of stone but idolatry of gold. We live in a society that worships wealth. I'd dare say that we idolize gold in more ways than ancient Israel could ever dream of.

Christ came to earth determined to live the prophecy of Isaiah (Luke 4: 18-22, which references Isaiah 61:1-1):

"'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
20And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’"

We should follow that model.