The Santa Claus Dilemma

More than once in the last week or two, I've had conversations with parents of elementary and middle school aged students about Santa Claus. As children in late elementary school and early middle school develop, learning logic and rational thinking, they begin to develop questions: how does Santa make it all the way around the world in one night? How does Santa's sleigh carry the weight of all those presents? Why do bad kids sometimes get lots of presents? (Or as we ask in Pittsburgh, "Hows come them jagoffs didn't get no coal, n'at?")

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{As a side note, how creepy is this picture of Santa? And why are there so many pictures of Santa telling us to be quiet?}

Eventually these questions evolve into: "Is Santa Claus real?"

This is a fundamentally hard question for parents to answer. In answering truthfully, we admit that we've been in essence lying to our kids for years; it feels like we've taken away with one word the twinkle and sparkle of innocent childhood. It is a transition for us to understand our awkward teeny-boppers as mini-adults. It is almost akin to baby's first steps: our world will never be quite the same.

So there are lots of ways to respond to this question, and I thought I would leave you with some blogs of real parents and how they've responded to the question.

The Sweetest Way to Tell Kids the Truth About Santa

This one tells us how to capture the spirit of who Santa is and the lessons we can learn from the Santa Claus myth.

The Santa Mission

This one empowers older kids to bring the Santa Claus spirit to others in their family and community.

The Real St. Nick

This one gives a good history of the real St. Nicholas and how his "spirit of giving" lives on through the Santa Claus myth.

There are lots of other ways, and I would love to hear your experiences! Let's work together to teach our children and youth to be caring people, to believe in things they can't see, and to believe that there is so much more good in the world than we know.

Reforma Et Semper Reformanda

Tomorrow, aside from being Halloween, is the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation. Protestants all over the world are celebrating, commemorating, and otherwise memorializing the historic split from the Roman Catholic Church. Most homes right now are focused on Halloween costumes and decorating pumpkins; in my house, we've spent countless hours debating the significance of this anniversary (that's what happens when seminary grads marry each other). Jeannie wove some of the significance seamlessly into her sermon yesterday (which in case you missed it can be viewed here). So I thought I would piggyback today to say why this date is important and how it affects our current church.

A semi-boring history lesson

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Let me give you a 60 second summary of what you learned back in 10th grade World History about the Reformation.

First, there's the Roman Catholic Church. At the time, most people were uneducated and poor, and they relied on the Catholic Church as a place of comfort and help. As family members died of disease or war, or when the land refused to yield crops, the people of Europe came to Catholic Priests for assurance that their loved ones would be at peace. Most of the Catholic Priests followed traditions, telling them to pray to saints and pray for their family members now residing in purgatory and to resist the power of sin. Some Catholic Priests saw an opportunity to advance the wealth of the church (or of themselves) and manipulated people by saying that in order for their family member to be saved or for them to be saved themselves, they needed to give a certain amount of money or large donation to the Catholic Church. This practice was called indulgences. Because the Roman Catholic Church is a church that is made up of a lot of humans, who are both capable of great good and great evil, the church was not perfect, and had lots of ways it could improve. But the "management" so-to-speak either didn't hear it or didn't care because the majority of people didn't realize what was going on.

So on October 31, 1517, a Roman Catholic monk named Martin Luther wrote down 95 ways he felt the church could improve and fix some of its corruption. These were called the 95 Theses. And he nailed these Theses to the church door.

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Of course, Martin Luther didn't really want to ditch the church; he loved Roman Catholicism and just wanted it to be the best version of itself it could be. But last time I checked, just writing down a list of complaints and nailing them to the church door isn't maybe the cleanest and least offensive way of making change.

One of Luther's main objectives was to make sure that all people could read and hear the Bible in their own language, something that had never been done before (all worship services were done in Latin, and a lot of people couldn't read). It so happens that the planets aligned and through the recent invention of the printing press, a German version of the Bible wasn't a far-off dream, something Luther worked for in his lifetime. With this new information and this first step, other men and women began writing and speaking and thinking about ways to make the church different and better, and many of these folks weren't so keen to stick with the Roman Catholic Church (OR the RCC wasn't too keen on keeping them around either).

One of these folks was John Calvin, who was the father of the Reformed tradition, which eventually through John Knox in Scotland, produces the Presbyterian Church. John Knox borrowed a lot of theology about the sovereignty of God, about our understanding of sin, and about our understanding of salvation from the theology of John Calvin (who was practicing it in Switzerland). Knox combined this theology with a form of governing by the people to develop Presbyterianism as it is today. The Presbyterian Church form of government was adopted in part by the founding fathers of the United States to serve as a model for our country's government. 

Semper Reformanda

The Reformation was famous for its witty slogans which included: sola scriptura (scripture alone!) and sola gratia ([we are saved] by grace alone) and soli deo gloria (glory to God alone). I like to imagine the reformer men wildly shouting them as though they were at a football game.

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The one, however, that in my estimation is most important for this anniversary is this:

reforma et semper reformanda

Reformed and always being reformed

You see, when Luther nailed those theses and Calvin wrote the Institutes, they opened up this big can of worms. Suddenly, it wasn't just 95 issues that Luther had with the church, it was 95 issues per congregation member in every church. It was not as though we could get through this list of issues and then go back to being perfect again; it was an acknowledgement that the church has never been perfect.

If we believe that human beings can never obtain perfection, that we are both sinners and saints, and we acknowledge that we bring both the sin and the saintliness into our congregations, we must then also recognize that the Reformation can never end. There will always be weeds to be weeded out.

That said, not every weed is really a weed. If I got to list my complaints, chief among them would be the uncomfortable pews. But just because I don't like it doesn't mean it's the way the church should reform itself. The second part of the phrase, and always being reformed, is often misquoted as "always reforming." While this is true, I prefer the grammatically correct, "always being reformed" because it reminds us that our reforming should always be inspired by the Holy Spirit. We are always being reformed by God.

Fractures and Healing

This idea that God is constantly reforming us is important for the church, as in all the churches of Jesus Christ around the world.

We don't get to own perfection as Protestants.

Because it's God doing the reforming and not us, it doesn't make Protestants more right than Catholics. In recent history, God has made reforms within the Roman Catholic Church with regard to speaking in the same language of the people and ethical codes for priests. In fact, almost everything Luther took issue with 500 years ago has been remedied.

And while there are many reforms that I think have been definitively the right moves for our church (like women's ordination and the adoption of the Belhar Confession), there are a lot of moves I think we are still trying to figure out if they're the most faithful. Like how do we deal with food allergies in communion, or should we have wine?

The truth of the phrase the church is "reformed and always being reformed" is important because we believe God is reforming all of the churches by the power of the Holy Spirit. This keeps the church relevant today rather than a time capsule of memories. It shows that God's promises are true for all of humankind in every generation and location, though they might look different according to culture. Nobody is forgotten; nobody is left behind. Perhaps the 500th anniversary of the Reformation is a chance for us to reclaim and rekindle our relationships with and respect for our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters. 

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Long Distance Family

My brother is four years younger than me. He is one of my best and closest friends; in fact, in high school we were so close, our youth group called us The McCarty Twins. While we have bickered as any siblings do, we have never been mean or stayed mad at each other for long periods of time. We've always been on the same team and we enjoy spending time together.

I love my brother. But I hope I never have to live with him again. At our age, we are better friends and better siblings because we do not live in the same house. This is not a dig at my brother or myself; simply put, we have different housekeeping standards and expectations, we have different social needs, and we are in different places in our lives. This isn't a negative thing in our relationship; on the contrary, it just shows where we are in life. The distance often enriches rather than harms our relationship.

This is true in the church as well. Sometimes I think we can love our brothers and sisters in Christ better when we don't live in the same house. I have dear friends who are pastors in the Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopalian traditions, and we could argue all day long about our theological differences. But I love and respect each of them for the role they play in the larger Kingdom of God. Because we live in different houses, we can serve God better and love one another more. I know it's weird and foreign in our culture to think something "different" isn't necessarily better or worse than what we know, but if we as Christians could learn to see our denominational differences as ways God is continuing to reform our communities, perhaps we could learn to respect and love the way God is using each of us to do God's work.

We still have work to do...

But the most important thing I think the 500th anniversary of the Reformation calls us to is the continued faithful discernment of reformation in our own congregations. Unity is preparing to wish a happy retirement to Pastor Dan and to welcome Pastor Mark to our church as the Interim. We are preparing for a journey of discernment, change, and thoughtfulness, as we begin the process of finding a new permanent pastor to step in after Dan's long tenure. The theme of our lives right now is reformation.

We are a church with 1300 members that sees about 50-75 visitors on average each Sunday. We see over 100 youth and over 100 children each Sunday through our various programs; we have members from infancy through 102 years old. We have missions and youth groups and dinners and women's circles and choirs and banners and...and...and... the list could go on and on. As we grow, it's time to think about what weeding and reforming God is going to be doing with our congregation. There may be friends who choose to live in a different house for a while, or permanently, but that is OK. There may be ministries that lose energy or become something different, but that is OK. There may be some things that feel uncomfortable or awkward, there may be mornings we just weep as we grieve this changing experience, and there may be days when we worry, but that too is OK. God has a plan for Unity Presbyterian Church, and all of it is a part of this reforming and refining process that Luther started 500 years ago. Unity, in fact, has been around almost half as long as the Reformation, and we wouldn't be where we are if we hadn't prayerfully discerned God's constant reformation in our community over the past 230 years. As we ring into November first, I will be actively holding our community in prayer for this reformation process, and I hope you will be too.

Praying for you...

When it would come time for prayer in the worship service, my mother would silently remind my brother and me to bow our heads, fold our hands, and close our eyes to observe the time. Neither my brother nor I were particularly enamored by this time. I would press my folded hands into my eyes and watch the "firework display" until my eyeballs hurt; my brother crawled under the pew to color with crayons the boots of the fellow in front of us. I can remember the pastor droning on from the pulpit; I remember wondering how someone who was so funny and interesting at Vacation Bible School could be so dang boring when he started the Prayer of the People.

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I'm sure many of you have similar stories about dozing off or checking your text messages during the long prayers in worship. And right now, my social media is full of people commanding me to pray for something or criticizing politicians for their tweets for prayers. Prayer has been on my mind lately, so I thought I would blog about some of the misconceptions about prayers and some of the ways that I have grown to understand prayer as an important piece of my spiritual journey. Here 8 myths about prayer and some reflection on why these are wrong.

#8: Praying for things is a form of therapy to make us feel better.

Throughout my life, when things have gotten difficult, prayer has sometimes been helpful to calm my anxieties and give me a sense of peace about a particular issue. There is certainly truth to that. But this understanding of prayer can be misleading and taken to an extreme.

Ultimately, prayer is not about us. Churches have taught us to kneel, bow our heads, fold our hands, and close our eyes, not [only] because it keeps wiggly kids from wandering off, but because it is a reminder to us as adults that we come before God as beggars, as those in need of God's mercy. Ultimately, prayer is a form of worship and praise of God. It is about giving God glory and honor, not about our personal agenda. We don't bring our requests to God so that God will give us what we want; we bring our requests to God because we recognize that we can't control what is happening and we need to hand over our cares to God, who is in control.

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When Jesus teaches about prayer in Matthew 6, he shows us that this humility is important. He tells us to go inside to pray, rather than flaunting our fancy prayers and bragging about our abilities in the streets. His prayer begins by giving honor and glory to God the Father (hallowed by Thy name); it continues with Your Will be done, not my will, not what I hope is going to happen, but Yours. Period. No matter what. While praying might produce a sense of calm (Philippians 4), that's not the reason or motivation for prayer.

#7: If we don't say it, God doesn't hear it.

Once there was some questionable ice coming down as students were leaving school. As I drove home, it briefly fluttered to my mind to worry about school letting out at this time, but I didn't give it a second thought until much later. I went home to put my thick wool socks on and cuddle up under a warm blanket, and it wasn't until after dinner that I looked at my phone to see that I had a message from a parent asking me to pray for the youth who were driving home. Of course this was 3 or 4 hours ago, but I wanted to affirm this prayer. Of course, I hadn't actually prayed out loud, except a prayer after the fact of thanks that the kids were home safely. I hadn't named those prayers; do they still count?

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Scripture is pretty clear on this one: you don't need to have a list of names or a grammatically correct sentence or even to have verbalized the prayer at all. In Matthew 6, Jesus says,

...for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

And even more, Romans 8 tells us:

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.

This feels sometimes like both a comfort and a curse. On one hand, when I've forgotten or run out of time or I didn't know what to pray for in the first place, I don't have to make myself feel terribly guilty because God knows before we ask. On the other hand, it means we aren't in control. It wasn't us that fixed it by naming it; it was God.

#6:  More Prayers = More Results

"She needs all the prayers she can get." It's a phrase I've heard myself say because it expresses for us the desperation and the need for prayer; it's a wonderful way to invite others into prayer. And there is something spiritually wonderful when large groups of people come together in prayer for one thing. Powerful!

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But I don't know of anywhere in scripture that says that if you pray more often or have hundreds of people praying for something, that God somehow hears it more. And if we worship a God who knows our hearts, who counts the hairs on our heads, and who cares for the sparrow, we have to know that God hears even our smallest whisper. And if we look back, we know that prayer isn't just about getting what we want or asking for our own personal will to be done, so "results" don't have a direct correlation with "answers."

#5: What does it mean when God "answers" prayer?

Before cars had bluetooth and before you could talk on speakerphone while driving, I would occasionally pray out loud while I was driving home from work. I would think to myself that the other drivers I was passing might think I was talking to myself. And I'd be lying if I didn't ever feel the creep of doubt and despair at the idea that I was talking to silence. 

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(^^ actual footage of me praying in my car...)

The idea that God "answers" prayer seems to assume that prayer is a question. But prayer does not have to be a question. It might be an expression of gratitude or thanks, a wail of mourning or a cry of pain; while we certainly ask for things like making the sick well or making our troubles go away, prayer is also the acknowledgement that Jesus shows us in Luke 22 when he prays in the Garden of Gethsemane: "Father if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done." Most of the time, it seems to me that the answered prayer we are looking for is something we can bank as proof that God exists. It seems like the question we are asking in prayer is, does God exist? Are you there, God?

Asking if God is there is a good question: it's a question that was asked by Moses at the burning bush and Paul on the road to Damascus. It's a question that helps us tell the difference between God's work and the work of something else. But perhaps it's unreasonable or even audacious to ask for God to prove to us that God exists by giving us what we want or performing some miracle for our benefit. When we are requesting things of God, we need to remember that our expected outcome comes from our limited human experience; God's response to these requests does not need to fit into our understanding. The fact that Aunt Susan didn't get well does not negate God's mercy and kindness; Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead but many others died and stayed dead. The fact that cousin Jimmy got a cancer diagnosis does not mean that God is punishing us; plenty of bad things happened to Jesus, including torture, betrayal and execution, but God was not punishing him.

Bottom line: when we pray, perhaps we need to redefine what it would mean for God to answer us...

#4: Prayers to you. Our prayers go out to you.

This is one of my personal pet peeves. It's fairly common even on a show like the Today's Show for a speaker to say, "Our thoughts and prayers go out to you," when a tragedy or disaster strikes. Even in my smaller circles who are praying for A's on tests and angry parents, I see folks saying, "Prayers to you." And sometimes people even ask for prayers or good vibes to be sent their way. And all I can think of is this ridiculous magical juju...

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Don't get me wrong. I want people who are struggling to know that I am thinking about them, whether they are in grief or stress or just need to know someone else is out there. I also want people to know that I'm lifting them to Jesus in prayer so that they can derive comfort from that fact. But if we're sending our prayers to other people or we are praying TO them, well, that just ain't right. That's golden calf, idols, Baal worship kinda stuff. The Ten Commandments warn us against this, telling us not to have any God but The Lord. 

It might seem like simple semantics, the kind of thing only pastors worry about, but I think it's important and here's why. When it's just another word for good vibes and thoughts and spirit fingers, prayer doesn't mean the same thing. It's a horizontal connection between me and you. That horizontal connection is good, but it's not the end of it. Prayer is when I take that horizontal connection and invite the vertical one, the one that connects both of us to God. When I think of prayers on behalf of others (intercessory prayer), I think of the story of the the paralytic in Mark chapter 2. The man is lying on his mat, and his friends carry him to Jesus. They can't get in the front door, so instead of leaving him or giving him only the comfort they could provide, the lift him up, dig a hole in the roof, and lower him into Jesus' presence.

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Guys - intercessory prayer is so much more than sending our own thoughts and juju to our friends who are suffering. It is the acknowledgement, that what ails you, what makes you suffer, what brings you pain is beyond my capabilities to fix, so I lift you to the one who is able to abundantly more than what we could ever hope or imagine.

#3:  Prayer is always intercessory, a wish list, a list of names.

When I was growing up, I had a Sunday School teacher who had written on a slip of paper in the front of her Bible the names of folks she prayed for every night. Then and now, I find this practice to be so movingly beautiful. I love and respect folks who have a spiritual gift of lifting folks to God in prayer. But for the longest time, I thought that this was all prayer was. 

Scripture shows us, however, that prayer occurs in a wide variety of ways. We find prayers of praise in Exodus when the Israelites come out of the dessert, prayers of confession in 2 Samuel after David commits adultery, prayers for strength in Joshua, and prayers for help in Esther. We find Jeremiah angrily cursing God and Jesus wrestling with God's will in the Garden of Gethsemane. We find David dancing with all his might and widows mourning and wailing. We find Eli praying for God to show himself and Job praying to be left alone. 

Prayer, it would seem, has a lot of room for variation. It doesn't need to look the same for everyone and at all times. 

#2: Prayer is always talking

Sometimes I think of prayer like the movie Bruce Almighty.

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Sometimes, especially in worship, we spend a lot of time doing the talking. We tell God what we need, what we want, how we feel, what we've done... We talk and we talk and we talk, and we consider prayers to be words and sentences that we create to give over to God. 

But if, as we've mentioned before, prayer is really about saying "God's will be done," how can we discern God's will if we are constantly doing the talking? How can we hear what God is saying if we're talking over God's voice? Sometimes the best prayer is to be still and know that God is God, God is here, and God is at work.

#1:  When crappy things happen, the only thing we need is prayer

After the massacre in Las Vegas, many of my friends on social media, many of whom are Christians, started posting some version of this:

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or this...

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or this...

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In other words, prayers aren't enough. Gun legislation, mental health care, or some other form of action, in their minds, needed to happen. Prayers were simply words in the wind. 

And this is true if we think of our prayers like we mentioned before, like juju vibes being sent in magical squiggly lines to one another. It's true if we're keeping this horizontal and only sending our prayers TO the victims. This is true if we rely on our government and legislators for our salvation and healing.

But it's simply not true if we believe that prayer is lifting one another and this situation up to God. If we believe that in praying for someone, we acknowledge that what we can do for them is immeasurably less than what God can do for them. If we acknowledge that this situation is beyond a simple fix of gun legislation and mental health care; this is beyond a simple answer. In fact, when I think of the tragedies, both natural disasters and acts of violence, that are prevalent in our current society, I can think of no better situation to lift to God in prayer. So, I emphatically say, "No!" when folks say that prayers are useless.

That said, I continue to think of the paralytic in Mark 2. His friends did not just pray for him and hope that Jesus would pass him by. They did not even go to Jesus to tell him where the paralytic was. Rather they make the effort to carry the paralytic, to dig a whole in the roof of the house, and to lower the paralytic precariously down through that hole. God gifts us with the ability to make a difference to those around us. I can't change what happened in Las Vegas; but I can do something about the way that I treat the people around me, I can do something about violence in my own community, I can do something about making sure our communities are safe. Prayer reminds us that we can't fix the laws and the situation all at once on a larger scale, and it inspires us to do what we can. Simply put, actions that don't recognize the size of the problem and the sovereignty of God won't fix it; prayers that don't inspire us to action aren't enough. We are called to balance the two: to give it over to God in prayer and to be inspired to do our part in God's Kingdom on earth.

Imperfect, but true.

When Alex and I were in Italy, one particular billboard overwhelmed the subway walls. The billboard advertised a gelato company called Grom, whose slogan was "Imperfetto ma vero". In English, this means, "Imperfect, but true." As I write this now, my mouth is watering for handmade gelato, a scoop of ice cream made by hand that might be extra chocolatey this time or extra creamy. Or maybe it has a few extra chocolate chips. Who wouldn't prefer hand made imperfection over sterile, manufactured monotony?

We both mentioned that a slogan like this, a slogan that brags of the imperfection of its product, would likely not fly in America. In the USA, we pride our products for being the best and for having consistent perfection in craftsmanship. When we go to restaurant or purchase a product, we expect flawless and immaculate products.

Just yesterday, I went to Panera where I ordered a bowl of soup and an apple. As the employee set down my plate, my apple rolled off onto the table. Not the ground, not the seat, just the table. The employee looked mortified and said, "I'm so sorry, let me get you a new apple." I looked at him incredulously. "No thanks," I said, "I'll just keep this apple." It surprised me that my apple touching the table, which appeared to have been wiped off and cleaned before I sat down, would warrant a new apple. It was likely I'd set it down on the table anyway, to have more room for my soup. In fact, my soup was so filling, I put my apple in my bag for later, and God only knows what kind of bacteria might be lurking in there.

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Imperfect but true. No, this foreign saying is truly foreign to us.

Babbling, Bumbling Band of Baboons

In worship yesterday, I made the ultimate move of cockiness. I came to the Communion Table without the Words of Institution written anywhere. In the PCUSA, we tell the story of Jesus on the last night of his life by reciting words from 1 Corinthians 11. An ordained Teaching Elder (or Minister of Word and Sacrament) is charged to say these words each time we celebrate at the Table. It's a task I find deeply humbling and moving. Nearly two years ago, when I was ordained, I would recite the words in my car over and over as I drove from my house to the church and from the church to my house. Alex would find me mumbling them in the bathroom or whispering them before bed. I wanted them to be ingrained in me, to come from my mouth authentically, and of course, to be perfect. The task of being a pastor is humbling, and I am determined to live up to the call.

Two years in, my imperfections caught up with me. As I lifted the silver cup at the 8:45 service yesterday, I thought the words in my mind, but from my mouth came a ridiculous string of words that did not go together.

"Cup...blood...save...Jesus...the..."

I felt like Porky Pig stuttering over my words...

Or like comedian, Brian Regan, spouting out words in his comedy act...

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I was utterly tongue tied. I began again, I executed well, and we moved on.

I know we all make mistakes. I know that perfection is unattainable. I know that many of my colleagues who read this will chuckle in memory of their own similar blunders. I know these things, but I still replay the moment over and over in my head with shame, embarrassment, and self-loathing. I still want to avoid mistakes, to be perfect.

After worship, a woman in our congregation came to me and said, "Lindsay, you always keep it real." I know she meant this with love; I know she meant it as a good thing, but at that moment I felt so deeply ashamed. I would like to go back in time and change it, or hide behind my big fluffy robe so that you cannot see the redness of my face or the tears in my eyes.

Imperfetto, ma vero

It was only in the afternoon, as I continued to reflect on this, that it occurred to me the joy in the woman's face as she told me that I "keep it real." It was a comfort for her to see the clergy not sparkling with perfection; it was a comfort for her to be in the same imperfect boat as me. And in truth, this has always been a part of my sense of call: that I'm an honest sinner, an imperfect saint, that I am a human with the same temptations, sins, and struggles as the next person. I do not have all the answers, but I'm praying for direction; I am just another disciple like anyone, and I hope that when we come together in worship, we are learning together about God's will.

But even with that in my mind, I remain uncomfortable with imperfection. Mistakes, or perceived mistakes, haunt me like irritating ghosts; they slowly pick and eat at me, until I'm debilitated by them.

So the idea that my blundering of the Words of Institution could bring comfort and even joy to someone is a baffling, shocking notion. Maybe the people of Unity need me to be imperfect, they need me to be human. Maybe the world needs me to be imperfect, but true, but real, but honest.

How would my life change if my goal was not to be perfect but to be true? What might I do differently if I was striving not to be immaculate but to be honest? What would be different if I aspired not to be infallible but to be real?

I know I'm not the only perfectionist around here, so I wonder if you sometimes feel this pressure. 

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12.8-10

What if all of us could lay down the idol of perfection, and pursued the realness, the truthiness, the honesty of God? What if we could relish or at least dwell in our weaknesses in order to rely on the power and strength of God?

The Fire Within

This weekend, I had the great blessing of spending time at Surfside beach with 16 of our delightful high school youth. We focused on the idea of rest as a spiritual discipline and about how even with all the many things we have to do, we are called not let school or cross country or our jobs or any of the things of the world to rule our lives, but rather to let our lives be ruled by our love for God.

We also talked about how our lives aren't magically changed overnight, but we have to enter spiritual disciplines and sacred rest in small doses every day. One of the scriptures we reflected on was this:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer up your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing, and perfect will.

Romans 12.1-2

The concept of being transformed is one that strikes me personally and one I hope might capture your heart as well.

Grammar Geek...

If you don't like grammar, feel free to skip ahead. For those of us Grammar Geeks, let's think on this for a moment. I love in this passage that it says "be transformed." In grammar, this is in the "passive voice" meaning the subject of the transforming isn't you; rather you are the object of the transforming. In other words, you can't transform yourself. Only God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, can do that.

So transformation, then, doesn't look like me beating myself up when I'm not perfect. It doesn't look like me foregoing sleep so that I can read another chapter of the Bible or putting together a regimen of spiritual practices that I can in no way keep up with. It doesn't mean that I need to become perfect; it means I need to turn my attention to the one who is.

I really like this because I am an over-functioner. As a child I would practice writing my alphabet for hours a day, even long into my teenage years, so that I would have perfectly neat handwriting. To this day, when I am in a group and we need a scribe, I like to be the one writing because I know my handwriting will be perfect. When I am assigned a task, I do it right and I do it perfectly, or I do not do it at all. If it were my task to become perfect, I would literally push myself to insanity trying to accomplish self-transformation. It is a relief for me that the dotting of my eyes and the crossing of my t's comes not from my own efforts but from me resting in God's love and transforming me from the inside out.

Yoga and the Third Niyama...

I bring up yoga and eastern spiritual practices not because I am secretly trying to support another religion but because I thought this lesson had universal truth. Sometimes when I practice yoga, I think the words my instructors use give voice to parts of my faith I didn't have words for before. Maybe this isn't strictly perfect, but when I hear something that resonates more with a truth I know from my faith, I just steal it and change it for myself. Don't judge me too harshly!

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When I was in yoga last week, the instructor was talking about the third niyama called "tapas." Tapas refers to the fire in your belly, the energy you have for perseverance, the part of you that burns and churns for transformation. I immediately thought about the Romans passage for this weekend, among others. Scripture gives us lots of examples of spiritual transformation, but it doesn't have a word for the internal fire that responds and yearns for that transformation. There's something biblical about God placing a fire within us that urges us to change and transformation, and maybe it resonates with you also.

I love this concept because I am reminded that I'm not done, I'm not perfect, I'm not always right. I love this concept because I always want to be better, to be more humble, to be more like Jesus. I love this concept because there is always room for a closer walk with God. As a pastor, I believe sometimes people think I have all the answers or I have my act together all the time. I think sometimes people think I should have all the answers or my act together all the time. And I think sometimes people think I'll attain perfection after like 5 years in ministry or when I have children or when I retire or something. I love Romans 12 because it doesn't make exceptions; it doesn't say, be transformed by going to seminary or being in ministry. And while verse two sort of seems like there might be an end point, the whole chapter seems to show us that this is a lifelong journey.

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So anytime I stand to pray or to preach, to guide our youth, I stand as a work-in-progress, humbly accepting God's will and God's grace. I teach our youth to allow God to transform their lives 5 minutes at a time because God continues to transform my life 5 minutes at a time. As a pastor, I pray that we can learn and grow together, that we can walk on this journey together.

And the darkness did not overcome...

The anticipation of today's eclipse has had many of us rushing to drug stores for glasses, worrying about South Carolina traffic, traveling to stay with friends and family...

Perhaps you bought some of the Krispy Kreme eclipse donuts:

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Or maybe you've been listening to Total Eclipse of the heart all day long:

(or you've been waiting to hear as Ms. Tyler sings it during the eclipse!)

Maybe you've been frantically reading about eye damage or listening to news stories of how the eclipse affects people's moods or the environment.

As I've been hearing about the eclipse for the past few weeks, because I'm a nerdy pastor and it's what I do, I've been reflecting on scripture that records what we can assume are eclipse-like events.

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In Exodus, as Moses is appearing before the Pharaoh to free the Israelite people, God causes 10 plagues, the ninth of which was darkness.

And there was dense darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days.

Exodus 10.22

The darkness interferes with the daily lives of the Egyptians: they can't see or move or do their work. The plague of darkness did not, however, affect the Israelites, who continue about their business. The plague shows the mighty power and clear authority of God in the world: even the sun and moon and stars listen to the Lord our God.

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Then in Joshua, as the army of the Israelites is conquering the land of Canaan, God makes the sun stand still.

The sun stopped in midheaven, and did not hurry to set for about a whole day. There has been no day like it before or since, when the Lord heeded a human voice; for the Lord fought for Israel.

Joshua 10.14

It is debatable whether this is a true "eclipse" but the stillness of the sun in the sky is unique and interesting. Again, we witness a God who stands on behalf of God's people, and we are made aware of God's presence by the altering of the normal patterns of the sun.

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The prophets describe the "Day of the Lord" or the day of God's judgment, as a day when the sun is dark and the world is topsy turvy.

See, the day of the Lord comes,

cruel, with wrath and fierce anger,

 to make the earth a desolation,

and to destroy its sinners from it.

For the stars of the heavens and their constellations

will not give there light;

the sun will be dark in its rising,

 and the moon will not shed its light.

Isaiah 13.9-11

When I blot you out, I will cover the heavens,

and make their stars dark.

I will cover the sun with a cloud,

 and the moon will not give its light.

All the shining lights of the heavens

I will darken above you and put darkness in your land, says the Lord.

Ezekiel 32.7

The earth quakes before them,

the heavens tremble.

The sun and moon are darkened,

 and the stars withdraw their shining....

Truly the day of the Lord is great;

terrible indeed - who can endure it?

Joel 2.10-11b

On that day, says the Lord God,

I will make the sun go down at noon,

and darken the earth in broad daylight.

Amos 8.9

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The idea of darkness during the day is one of terror, judgment, and fear. 

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In the gospels, we also witness an eclipse at Jesus' death.

From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three o'clock in the afternoon. ... Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.

Matthew 27.45;50

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. ... Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.

Mark 15.33;37

It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land, until three in the afternoon, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." Having said this, he breathed his last.

Luke 23.44-46

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There is a sense that the cosmic power of Jesus' death is so enormous that it overwhelms even the sun. I also like to imagine that the scene of Jesus on the cross was so tragic that God averted God's eyes and drew the shade over the shame and pain of God's son. 

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So, it should come as a surprise to us that over the centuries we have gone from an eclipse being a symbol of fear and pain and terror, a sign that the divine powers that be were enacting judgment on the land, to a marketing event. Instead of something to fear, an eclipse has become something that causes traffic jams, something to travel 100 miles to see, and something to have a sweet party about. With scientific study, we've learned that eclipses happen on a reliable basis; they are something that simply happens, a shift from the normal routine of the celestial bodies and, just as quickly, a shift back to the habitual orbits.

Of course, when I emerged from our church office to a chorus of cicadas and the automatic evening lights had come on in front of the sanctuary and all the air had a cloudy mysterious haze to it, I wasn't really thinking about science and orbits. It was downright spooky and a strange and almost a stumbling block to my brain and senses. Even this weird snake living next door to my friend, Mel, was thrown off his little groove as he stared at the sun {literally the only time I'm going to say anything cute about a snake}.

There's a reason we stepped out from work or we drove 100 miles; there's a reason we hunted down eclipse glasses and purchased Sun Drop. Somewhere in the midst of this eclipse, we all experience something ethereal, surreal, and divine. The God who made the darkness over Egypt centuries ago eclipsed the sun today. The God who ordered the heavenly bodies made sure that there would be moments like these that would remind us that God is in charge. Whether you're black or white, Democrat or Republican, Christian or not, all of us craned our necks and shielded our eyes as the world stood still in darkness this afternoon. When the darkness crept into our world, we did what God has always called us to do: we looked up.

I keep coming back to the gospel of John (who oddly does not record the eclipse at Jesus' death). John begins with these famous lines:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

John 1.1-5

Today's eclipse for me is a reminder that the darkness of the world does not last. I am comforted that even when the darkness seems to settle and turn the world topsy turvy, God, just like the sun sitting behind the moon, is still present, still active. The light and love of God is not something that can be contained by the dark and simple presence of the moon; no, the light is something that bursts forth, even when the shadows are unbearable and the world is in chaos. 

It seems appropriate to me that yesterday our youth led us in worship and we were able to experience such joy and light coming from the youth of our church, from the future of our church. It seems appropriate to me that we've kicked off another year of Sunday School. It seems right to me that people of literally all ages gathered yesterday for the ice cream social. These are the ways that the Kingdom of God was bursting through the darkness within the walls of our church. These are the ways that our church refuses to be blinded by darkness but constantly seeks the light.

The light of God shines in the darkness, and darkness did not, can not, and will never overcome it.

So Fresh and So Clean Clean

There was a point this summer when the mess in my office reached a totally unacceptable point. Not only was there the usual clutter: the stacks of papers, files, bibles, books, and post-its, but there were additional piles: old curriculum, donations of supplies, materials that hadn't been put away, receipts, first aid supplies, crafts, pictures. And then it got embarrassing: dirty dishes, empty water bottles, candy wrappers, forgotten lunches, and old candy. I had officially reached the status of Pig Sty.

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It was so bad, that bless his sweet sweet heart, Albert, our Sexton, took it upon himself while I was away to organize my mess in to piles, to discard some of the more embarrassing items of trash, and to give my office a fresh feeling of newness. I really cannot thank him enough.

When I came to him to thank him for this kindness, he said, "Well, I figured you'd just gotten to a place where you were overwhelmed and couldn't keep up with it." It was so true. In Youth Ministry, you're liable to have things like toilet brushes, crayons, and Bibles tucked into every nook and cranny, and the fast pace of the summer makes it nearly impossible to keep up. But I had not done a great job of self-care and became easily overwhelmed with the items overflowing my office. It had come to a point that when I looked around, I wasn't even sure where to start, or how to make it right again.

Maybe you know what I mean...

Maybe my office isn't all that far off from where a lot of us find ourselves. Maybe you also suffer from Messy-Desk-Syndrome, or maybe there is other mess and clutter in our lives.

Sometimes I wonder if I've made too many mistakes. Perhaps people will judge me solely on the errors I've made or the things I've dropped the ball on. Sometimes, I wonder if I've made a reputation that is so messy and so set in one way that it is too late to be changed.

Sometimes I am afraid. I'm afraid of violence and hatred I see on TV. I'm afraid of angry mobs and nuclear war. I am afraid of a world that is so different than the one I grew up in. I'm afraid of bullies, of people whose feelings have been hurt, of being wrong, and of accidentally hurting others. Sometimes, I'll admit, the fear I have in our ever-changing world feels like a mess I cannot begin to navigate. How can I make it through all this fear to the light on the other side?

Sometimes, when I was a teenager, I felt like people put me in a box. I was a band-geek, and an English nerd. I was a goody-two-shoes Christian. I was that girl who dated that weird guy who spread a bunch of rumors about her after they broke up. Sometimes I would wonder if anyone in my school would ever take the time to listen to me, to truly know me. Sometimes, my identity as a Middle or High School student felt like a mess I could not fix, a swamp of assumptions I could not escape.

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The feeling of drowning in mess is not that foreign to us or to our teenagers, or perhaps even to our elementary aged children.

Starting Fresh

Yesterday morning on the Today's Show I saw a segment about the fashion trends for Back To School, which highlighted that white tennis shoes, fresh crisp and clean were all the rage for this year's Back to School Fashion.

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The description and the pictures brought me back to a dewy morning standing at the bus stop with my new Converse All-Stars on the first day of Middle School. I wore my baggy jeans and baby-T shirt; my horrible haircut fixed as best I could behind a headband, my brand new red Jansport book bag on my back. I remember thinking that this new school was a fresh start: I could leave the past behind, make new friends, be a new person, and live new experiences. Even though that hope faded throughout the school year, there was a part of me that lived for that fresh new feeling of hope.

As Hoda Kotb described the crisp white tennis shoes, I thought both of the incredible blessing of a new school year and the harsh contrast it makes with the messy, scuffed up challenges of our everyday life. This week, our kids get a fresh start to make a new impression. They get to set a new trend for themselves in clothing; they redefine themselves (for better and sometimes worse) in terms of their personality; there are boundless opportunities for new friends, new classes, new schedules, and new lunch tables. The world is their oyster.


Our world doesn't give us a lot of light to guide us through the mess, and it is not a far leap to feel hopeless, especially at the age of 13. But our God does give us this hope. Our God does provide crisp white tennis shoes when the world around us is scuffed and gray. Our God does hear the cries of God's people; God does give us the light to see clearly through the fog. Our God does give us the real-life and metaphorical Alberts to come clean out our messy lives so we can start fresh.


This is the message we have heard from Jesus and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
-1 John 1.5-8

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Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
-Romans 5.1-5



So as we prepare for a fresh new school year, I pray that together we would take this as an opportunity to renew our hope in a bright future, to renew our faith that Christ is near us, and to renew our sense of commitment to that hope, knowing that we are beloved children of God walking in the light, even when the shadows cling so closely.


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Presence

As we sit on the couch buried in our phones after work looking at our social media accounts, I ask my husband a serious question. Alex always thinks before he responds to my questions, so when I was met with silence I was patient and didn't respond. A half hour (and several scrolls through Facebook and a few rounds of Solitaire) later, I remembered that I had asked a question and never had an answer [or maybe he did answer, and I missed it because I was reading about someone's Pinterest fail]. So I asked, "Hey did you hear me ask a question?" Alex responded, "What? No."

We are sitting a cushion away on the couch but are we present?

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I love having our parents come to visit us. I love to share a cup of coffee and blueberry muffins in the morning with my mom. I love to show Alex's parents our favorite dining in Charlotte. I love to show our Grandmas around the Peach Stand and walk with our friends on the Greenway. But I'm also an anxious host.

My mother never leaves a dish in the sink and wipes down strangers' counters. She always empties the coffee grinds into the trash and does a load of towels in the laundry every day. Meanwhile, I will let my sink fill up until I can't fit anything else in, and I wipe the counters down on Fridays. I always forget the coffee grinds until the next morning, and my hubby is the laundry guru on Saturdays and Sundays. We have wonderful silver pitchers and plates in our home, which I know need to be polished, and we have half finished furniture and decorative projects everywhere. When we have guests, I find myself nervously over-cleaning and making sure that everything is prim and pressed and perfect for their arrival and stay with us. My house is clean, but did I hear what my guest just told me? My silver is polished but am I present?

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A friend calls me while I'm watching the Penguin game in a crisis about something very difficult in her life. A youth texts me during dinner about something they are struggling with. The store clerk at Target tells me to have a great day, and I stumble along with my bags out the door. Do I have the patience and inner peace to really be present in these moments? Or am I so busy inside my own head I can't be bothered to notice and be in the space of today?

While I soaked up some Sabbath time over the last week of stay-cation, I reflected often on the idea of being fully present, of noticing the world around me, and being non-anxiously aware of the world and my inner self. This appears to be one of the ways God is speaking to and teaching me on my journey right now...

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Jesus: the example and the teacher

In the world, we often hear of being present as a trendy, hipster, Buddhist notion. You download the Headspace app and practice yoga and go unplugged for a weekend. It doesn't necessarily sound, at least to me, like a fully Jesus-inspired, uniquely Christian concept. What I've been reflecting on is something kind of similar, but wholly different. When I think of being present, I think of two stories of Jesus that show how he taught and lived out the principle of being present in life today.

The Teacher: Mary and Martha

In Luke 10.38-42, we find Jesus at the home of two women. It is here that Jesus teaches us the lesson of presence. Mary and Martha could not be more opposite of one another, nor could they bicker more and be more bitter toward one another. Martha, who might be my kindred spirit, runs around the house like a chicken with her head cut off making sure she is hospitable. She is cleaning, cooking, setting the table, observing all the right societal customs and traditions. No silver would be unpolished, no counter unwiped, and certainly no coffee grounds would be left in her kitchen, if she were around today. Martha exemplifies this perfect, fastidious host, and in spite of the rest of the story, she has my greatest admiration and respect. I feel a touch of exhilaration just thinking about her experience of dinner preparations.

Mary, on the other hand, plops down in front of Jesus to hear him speak, leaving her sister with the weight of all the chores. Sometimes I imagine her like my brother, who loves to sit on the recliner in my parents' house in his robe until the very last second on Christmas Day. It comes to the point where Martha speaks up:

Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!

I think we can all agree this is a reasonable request, given the circumstances of the meal and the household and the society at the time. But Jesus' response is surprising and, well, present:

You are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.

Um, seriously Jesus? In Pittsburgh, we would call Mary a "jagoff" (for not helpin' to red up the haaase n'at). What can this lazy bum, this annoying little sister, this freeloader, what can she possibly teach us?!?!?!

Let's look at Mary. Mary recognizes that it's not every day that the Messiah enters your house. She realizes that she may only have a couple of hours to be with Jesus: to hear his teachings first hand, to experience his compassionate eyes and soft voice, to watch him heal and save, to shake his hand and wash his feet, to be present. As Jesus captivates her gaze, the preparation of dinner (and the polishing of the silver, and the wiping of the counters, and the dumping of the coffee grinds) seems inane, unimportant, and irrelevant in comparison to the experience of Jesus in her midst. A perfectly clean home and a perfectly cooked meal and perfectly polished sliver, these things are temporary; the experience of Jesus in your midst is the kind of incarnational experience that lasts a lifetime, an eternity.

Through the example of Mary, Jesus teaches us the importance of presence in our daily lives, that if we are slaves to the things of society and of the world, we will miss our opportunity to do what is right and to be present at the feet of Jesus.

The Life: The Hemorrhaging woman

It's one thing to teach; it's another thing to live the example. Of course, we would expect nothing less from Jesus, but it is telling that the gospel of Luke contains both a teaching of Jesus on the matter of presence (Mary and Martha) and an action of Jesus that demonstrates his presence with other people.

In Luke 8, a man named Jairus comes to Jesus because his daughter is dying. Jesus begins walking to the man's home and the crowds follow. I always imagine Jesus walking at a very slow pace with a smirk on his face because he's proving that God has a plan for this day. [Also the Jesus of my imagination is a little sassy...I hope that's true.]

There are people pressing in all around him and the crowd is reminiscent of an unrelenting, sweaty mosh-pit of over-excited Harry Stiles fans. I can't imagine this was a very fun journey for Jesus.

If it were me, I'd be like, let's just get through this as quickly as possible. Let's go another way to avoid the crowds. Let's use clothes-lining and violence if we have to. But not Jesus. Not only is Jesus intimately surrounded by humans and incidental touch and crowds, but he manages to be so present that he notices and identifies the touch of one person. Luke 8.42-44 tells us that a woman who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years came to Jesus and touched his cloak for his healing power. Jesus could have ignored this and just said, cool, another anonymous soul healed! He could have concentrated on the family of Jairus, the task at hand, and getting to Jairus' daughter before she died. Jesus was busy. Instead, Jesus turns to find out who touched him, approaches the woman face to face, calls her "daughter," and proclaims that her faith has healed her. 

Jesus shows us that he is never too busy, too hurried, too distracted, or too important to notice us and meet us where we are.

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So...presence...today...

It's May. May always seems to whip past me in a blur of graduation parties, cook-outs, field days, and Stanley Cup playoff games. It's sort of the perfect time to watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off and take the message to heart:

I think in the chaos of early summer and the crowds of our lives in May, Jesus is calling us to be present. Jesus is telling us to stop being Martha, to put down the spring cleaning and the dinner plans and the parties and the concerts and to be present in our homes and in our families. Jesus is showing us how to be present in the crowd, to hear the cries of our children and the struggles of our neighbors, to listen with compassion to the hurts of our friends and the life stories of our families.

Because it is in these acts of presence and moments of intimacy, it is there, through the power of the Holy Spirit, that we find ourselves face-to-face with Jesus.