Why Do It at All?

Even as a pastor, I'd be lying if I said I didn't wonder sometimes why we do this whole church thing. Yes, I know the part of the bible where Paul says to keep meeting together, and I hear that Jesus has a real thing for community. But that said, there are still times when I wonder if we aren't wasting our time, fooling ourselves, pleasing ourselves on Sunday mornings, or doing church in general. But then, I remembered that there is a purpose to this, a point.

The heart is fickle and the will is strong. It is hell-bent on control and on desiring and creating its own outcomes. It deems itself the only player on the stage, demanding that all others deliver their lines and perform their blocking so that the will reigns supreme. It wants to, at the end of any play, shove the other players off the stage and take the bow alone, hoping that the encore will be more of the same. More of its own personal show.

It makes for a boring and meaningless play - a boring and meaningless life.

To assume that I am always the star, the prima dona, to assume that it is always me who is right or me who is to have my will done in any situation is to deny the work of the Director, the Creative Creator who is in all things, pulling this whole thing together.

If there is any star in this metaphor, it is the person of Jesus and we are all his understudies. We watch and read the story, the narrative in the bible, to see how he interacts with all the other players (not just so we read the bible, but to be formed), never making them less important than he is, always making them shine brighter because he is near. We emulate him and memorize his lines because they are for us the words of life.

If we will study, if we will spend time with him, he will make us ready to take his place. He will not move far off, simply off stage but within ear shot, giving us nudges and cues when our words become trapped in our throats.

This is life as we are to know it, studied and full of love. We have watched this scene time and time again, seeing the grace of the master actor (though he is being and not putting on a show) poured out in each and every scene. We have watched him ad lib and riff with the rest of the cast, drawing them into his greatness.

When it is our turn, we turn to the director who nods and gives us that knowing look that he has done his part and he will offer guidance and help, but he has already shown us the star, the model, the one we are to emulate, the one under whom we have studied.

We will hear, from stage left, gentle words of encouragement from the star himself. He is out of sight but still engaged, longing for and willing our success.

And the moment comes, the lights dim, the curtain begins to rise. This is the moment where we must choose, will we innovate, try to do something new, let our will reign? Or will we let the old, old story play itself out through our body, our role, once more.

Some days, the will wins. And we find ourselves lost in the middle of the cast, the audience jeering, buffeted about because we are confused, shocked, dismayed, and frustrated that our play, our lives, our will is not working so well. It is boring and it is petulant. It is hurt by the boos it hears. Our fellow cast members betray us, our families (sitting right in the front row) don't give us the applause and adoration we think we deserve or need. We are lost, alone - a lonely and tragic figure on a crowded stage.

But then we remember that we've seen the star in this same scene on this same stage before. He stood right here. He was in this place. And so, we gather what courage we have left and in our meekest voices we utter one of his lines. We move to his blocking.

And the audience responds with applause.
Our fellow actors walk along with us.

We begin to act with more confidence, really losing ourselves into the role. We begin to realize that everyone on stage with us has the same director, the same star under which to study. What seemed like it would be an abysmal failure turns into rave reviews. We are enlivened by the part we play; in it we have found our true self.

As the last act draws to a close, we find ourselves should to shoulder with our brothers and sisters, our faces glowing with the sweat of our parts well played, our hearts full and spent at the same time, and we realize that this is what we were meant to do all along. This is how it was always supposed to be.

And we hope we remember this same feeling when the curtain rises tomorrow. But between now and then, we show up at rehearsal. Practicing our lines, and learning our part. Until the very core of our being is no longer ours and our will no longer wants the spotlight but simply is ready for the Director's will to be done in us.

The Game We Play

A church member with whom I was visiting the other day in his nursing home was explaining to me how he didn't like to go hear many of the preachers who rotated through their facility. He told me that at his age that he'd had enough hellfire and brimstone and didn't need that any more. He told me that people at that stage in life didn't need to hear any of that anyway.

I think he was right on both counts.

He then started to talk to me about the fact that so many in the free church tradition could become preachers and pastors with no formal education. He asked if someone would go to see a surgeon who had never been to med school. He then made a comment that I thought was hilarious - "Some are called, some just came."

Preachers in my tradition talk a lot about being called, about this overt experience where God comes down and taps you on the rear and tells you to get in the game. That is a great experience, an amazing phenomenon, but it negates the fact that there are no bench warmers in life. Everyone is either playing defense or offense for the kingdom, and both teams come from the same bench.

All are called to bear the image of God to the world, to be connected to the Creator.

The problem is that when some of us experience "call" we misinterpret that to mean a call to condemnation and the perpetuation of our own message of differentiation using the Word and ideas of God.

If we could only allow ourselves to feel called to be with God, then we would really learn how to be with each other. I think that most of the time that Jesus spends talking about hell he's referring to those who never really learn what it means to be with each other, what it means to be human.

The eternal butt pat from God is telling us all to get in the game, to live the godward life, to be connected and centered and whole. It is the constant assurance that the one who has created us desires us and loves us. We all fulfill our calling when we operate out of that love, and we all fail our calling when we do not.

It is no simpler nor more complex than that.

Belonging

I was sitting in the car outside of Target while my son slept and my wife, daughter, and mother-in-law went in to do some shopping. Because Quinn seems very prone to napping while in the car, I have learned to take a book along everywhere or something else to work on while he sleeps. I’ve also noticed that people tend to assume the cars around them are empty when walking through the parking lot.

On this particular day, I was reading something in the backseat when a woman walked past the car on her way to the store and then turned around and walked back. She stopped right in front of my car and began to have a conversation.


“What’re you doing here?” I heard her ask. There was no reply.

“What’re you doing here?” she asked again, her pitch rising a bit as if that was the reason she had received no answer before.

It was then that I noticed that while she was talking, she was looking downward, towards the ground around the cart return. It was also then that I began to notice a squeak or a chirp coming from somewhere near the ground around the cart return. Immediately I thought, “How compassionate. How wonderful. This woman has taken time out of her busy day to turn back from her errand and care for an animal who has been wounded and ignored outside the Target in Longview, TX.”

The conversation continued.

“What’re you doing here?” she asked a third time, like Jesus, reinstating Peter to carry on the ministry of the Kingdom. Here she was bringing healing and life. I stopped even trying to read and watched.

It was then that I noticed that her posture was not one of a healer, but of an aggressor. Her shoulders were driven forward and her face was leaned in toward the still unseen creature on the ground. Perhaps she was frightened that her attempts at kindness would be met with aggression from this wounded animal, and so, she mimicked a posture of aggression herself.

Finally, she made her move.


“I haven’t seen any grackles, what on earth do you think your doing. Shoo, now! You’re not supposed to be here,” she said, and she made a movement toward the bird, chasing it away from picking up the remains of Target food court refuse left on the ground beneath the cart return.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no great defender of the grackle. So far as I know, they are not an animal of particular interest to the Sierra Club. When I lived in Waco, they were a constant nuisance. Anywhere that food might drop, they migrated. They are not birds known for their cleanliness; in fact, they probably carry with them quite a bit of disease. In Waco, there was an employee of the city (or so the legend goes) who was hired simply to ride around town with a shotgun loaded with blanks and fire up in the air to scare the grackles away from various establishments.

To me, they are unattractive and bothersome birds. But really, if they don’t come to my space, where else where they go? Have I built where they used to live?

When I heard this woman talking to the bird, I really wasn’t thinking about the environmental impact of shopping centers, though I have since discovered (through my awesome research skills and Wikipedia) that grackles had their habitat effected by human expansion early on, but now have a pattern of growth with human establishments, due to their ability to adapt and their “resourceful and opportunistic nature.” In other words, we are creating our own problem.

Instead, I was thinking about how those words sounded coming out of her mouth - “You don’t belong here.” 

I was thinking about the way that her posture stood to this small bird.

This woman, who was not large by any human standards, stood towering over this bird who was bothering her, who was not to her liking.

How often, and to whom do we say, “You don’t belong here?” 

How many of our systems say to other groups, “You don’t belong here?”

How many of our churches say to outsiders (be they outsiders based on religion, color, creed, race, marital status, or sexual orientation) “You don’t belong here?”

This is not a political concern for me. My faith is larger than my politics. This is a God issue for me. God, this One who is trying to bring everything together...I wonder what God thinks of the boundaries we are so hell bent on drawing in order to protect our own interests.

I’ve been reading a book called The Scapegoat by Rene’ Girard. His contention (in his reading of historical persecution texts) is that when things go wrong, the dominant power always seeks a group on which to place the blame (a blaring oversimplification, just read the book). When I look around me, in a society where faith and politics are intermingled and where the culture is shifting, I see dangerous patterns of blame and boundary drawing emerging from people who are confessing with their mouths that “Jesus is Lord.”

If Jesus is Lord, then we must understand that he is Lord of all, and let our actions follow that belief. Jesus may be my Lord, but I am professing that he is Lord of all. If that’s the case, then who am I to exclude my brother from the table. Not the table of America, the table of Life, the table of Christ. 

My hope and my prayer is that the posture of my life would be open. My shoulders would be relaxed and my face drawn in a permanent smile that welcomes the world to the God I know. My prayer is that God would eradicate in my life the word of negation the don’t that breathes in my small and scared self. May it be replaced by the affirmation of my sacred self so that with my life I take the time to turn around and say, “You belong here” to all the grackles (myself included) that I may encounter.

Looking Up

A few nights ago, we spent the night in a hotel while I was at an event for my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. Staying in a hotel makes putting the kids to bed a bit difficult as they must sleep in the same space, a different space than the ones to which they are accustomed. Sophia loves this, it means that she gets to watch TV and sleep in a queen sized bed all by herself. Quinn, on the other hand, doesn't really know what to make of it. He normally requires a lot of work to put down, having to be reassured time and time again that we are not going to leave him in this strange space by himself.

As I was working with him to get him to drift off, I was able to watch what he does in a new way. The light in the hotel room was much brighter than the pitch black that is the norm for his room at night. As I watched him work to find a place and rest and comfort I thought about how my own struggles are grown up versions of his own. In the following poem, I tried to convey what it was that I was thinking about while I watched him.

I watch him

Squeezing and squirming

Working and straining

Trying to find that place of comfort 

In a sea of space where he feels alone

His companions are there 

And he reaches for them and is reassured

He rises, making sure of my watching him

I reach out, my arm stretched tight against the side of his world

And place the weight of my palm on the small of his back

Letting him know that I am there

His head drops back and he works back towards comfort

Finally he breathes deep and stirs no more

His back softly rising with the fabric of existence 

Moving in and out of his lungs

I am no different

I  look in a lonely world comfort to find

Finding my companions I seek the boundaries

I strive and struggle

Squeeze and squirm

Losing myself in work and the toil of it all

Until finally I look up and make sure that I too am being watched

It is the constant reminder

That the hand on my back is connected to the smile

On the face of the one who sits both in and out of my world

And that smile is for me

It is comfort that all is well and shall be well

If only I will remember to look up

I hope that we can remember to look up and see that smile. It's there for all of us, you know.