Some Important Messages

Monday, October 30, 2017

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



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.



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.



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. 


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.

Monday, October 23, 2017

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.



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.


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?



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!



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. 


(^^ 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...


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.



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.


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:


or this...


or this...


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.

Monday, October 2, 2017

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.


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...



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?