I am going to throw a party

Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.

- John 2:3

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The jury has ordered Frank Schaefer to be suspended from ministerial duties for 30 days. At the end of the 30 days if Frank Schaefer cannot agree to follow Discipline in its entirety, he must surrender orders.

- Reconciling Ministries Network

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I am going to throw a party.   I want it to be a place where people sit together, eat together, geek out about John Wesley, make potluck jokes, and never consider self-editing the gender of anyone’s love or spouse.  

It’s going to be in a brightly lit room on a warm night.  People will come in out of the cold, warming their hands in mugs of hot cider. More and more people will come in, welcomed by the radical hospitality of long hugs and noisy appreciation.  Those walking by will look in and see all the glowing faces, and, if they are exceptionally brave, know that by knocking on the door they will be welcomed with open arms too. 

All of us will be every inch ourselves and glory in that great gift of being alive, being lovable, being loved, and loving in return.  The cold chill of shame will be forgotten in the warmth of this home. 

I know that some of you will not take me up on this invitation.  Instead you’ll be clutching a book you and I both think is holy, but in different ways.  You’ll march away from my home.  My heart will be sad at the empty spaces around this table, wishing that the ones I love wouldn’t be left out in the cold.

And when the moment comes, we’ll all gather together in one room.  We’ll break out the bread and the cup and we will gave thanks to the one who created us, the one who taught us to love, and the one who brought us together.  All who wants to partake will be offered it, without hesitation, without qualification.  Bread, wine will be offered with dignity and compassion. 

You see, this isn’t my party, and this isn’t my table. 

And because this isn’t my party, and because it’s not my table, it won’t stop.  God’s invitation to come on in and participate in the work of love never ends.  

Those who think they define United Methodist might throw us out of the label, but they can’t throw us out of this party.  They might try to drown out our singing with their shouting, but they can’t overcome the party.  They might try to distract me or scare us from our love and our gentleness, but they can’t stop the party. 

I am going to throw a party.  Do you want to come? 

The First Baptism

Of course it would be a baby baptism. 

Until yesterday morning I have held precisely two babies.  Last year during communion at First a baby was placed in my lap.  The one before that took place approximately a fourteen years ago at a family reunion.   Each of these times I was handed a baby while I was sitting down, with a lap, and a nearby adult to hand off any disasters (crying).   

So when I realized that my first baptism would be “simply” a matter holding an infant, pouring water over his head, and standing up in front of an entire congregation in a confident and holy manner, I may have lost some sleep.  I’ve been praying the same thing for weeks: “Don’t let me drop the baby, don’t let me drop the baby.” 

Yet when I met the baby, I immediately relaxed.  He was a curious child and smiled a bubble of joy as I peered into his carrier.  I practiced holding him and we both realized this was a bit scary, but he was willing to work with me.  The pastoral calm front was well in place.  

I offered him a finger and he held fast and bobbled it through the whole prelude to the baptism.  The congregation was distracted with giggles and joy – as it should be.  When I put the water on his head “I baptize you in the name of the Father,” I stopped for a moment.  I lost my ability to speak as I held this wonder of a new life and performing one of the most sacred acts of my church.  

He turned back at me and made eye contact with large eyes.  They said: “This is new, this is weird, this is kinda … AWESOME.”  He clapped his hands in the baptismal water bowl, sprinkling it all over me. 

Ah.  Remember my baptism and be thankful.  Thank you God. 

“I baptize you in the name of the Son.  I baptize you in the name of the Holy Spirit.” 

And although I wanted kiss this wonderful, patient, giggling, splattered boy on the head, I said a small prayer instead:

You know kiddo, it’s a big family.  There are more than your fair share of embarrassing uncles and hard family secrets.  Despite that I want you to  know that God loves you - absolutely, thoroughly, ungrudgingly, unconditionally loves you.  I hope you will help join us in the work that God has laid out before us, by loving your neighbor and working to bring about justice, peace, and hope for all.

Yet, even as I say this I realize that your work has already begun.  You’ve given such joy to me and to this congregation through your excitement.  I cannot wait to see what beauty you will bring next. 

God, be with this child, and help him teach us more about this love, curiosity, and bravery he’s already got in spades. 

Amen.  

The Transformative Power of Praying for Kittens

When I was little I wanted a pet all of my own.  I prayed for a kitten, but my parents never got me one.  I prayed for kitten, but my parents would not be swayed.

We already had a cat, but she was a grown up cat and I wanted a kitten.  A nice, small, cuddly kitten with a pink nose.  I asked my parents for a cat, but they said no.  I prayed and prayed, asked and asked, but I still only got noes. 

I asked over and over, and one day the answer changed and I knew that I had an in to getting my cat.  Instead of no, they said I needed to show that I could take care of the cat that we had already.  So it became my responsibility to feed her dinner every night.  Even if I was tired.  Even if I didn't want to,  I still had to feed the cat.

Well one day the stray cat outside my grandparents house gave birth to kittens.  There was one kitten that was the color of cream.  He was a rascal and would pounce on his siblings.  Immediately I fell in love with him and said: "Please God, let me take this kitten home!"  I dragged my dad outside - he was the one who was holding out, in large part I think because he was the one who needed to clean the litterbox - but when I put my kitten into his hands the kitten instantly began to purr and nuzzled against him.  His heart grew three sizes that day and I took him home. 

I thanked God because I finally had my cat!

But then something funny happened.  That older cat, the one I showed that I was responsible enough for a new kitten? When we brought the kitten home, she started to follow me everywhere.  She began to sleep with me every night curled up on my feet.  She even would stick her cold nose against my leg, make me jump and get under the warm covers.  The kitten and I became friends, but the cat that loved me the most was the one that I had already. 

I got my cat! And my prayer changed, from please god to thank you God!

You see, my was  not the cat that I was expecting. And God answered my prayer for a cat all of my own, with the cat that I formed a bond with proving that I was ready for my own cat. 

But you know what, here's one of the amazing ways prayer works. Because I was praying for a kitten, I learned how to take care of the cat. Because I showed I could take care of a cat, I got to have one.  Sometimes we change and learn so we can have those things we ask God for all the time, because the things we ask for are important and big responsibilities.  So all those times we ask God to give us peace in the world all the time, we get more peaceful hearts to show we're ready for that peace.  Or if we ask for more love, our hearts become more loving.  And if we ask for a cat all of our own, our hearts open up better to the new cats around us, but also the cats that we already own.

Let's pray. 

God, help us ask for big things, like love and hope and kindness.  Help us ask for those big things, so we can have bigger hearts ourselves. Help us remember to ask all the time for these big things, so we know what is important, and can live our lives with those important things. 

Amen.

--- This was the children's sermon for our March 9th worship service.

Praying for Wednesday

Our church set aside our sanctuary and some time to pray on election night.  It took place concurrently with a meeting and so the clergy at my church took twenty minute shifts over the course of the hour and instead of being bothered by the interruption, I found that I was grateful for the quiet on a frenzied night of meetings and election coverage.   The candles and white calla lilies from All Saints day still covered our sanctuary.  It was simple, pious atmosphere.  I felt called into a quiet sense of responsibility.  

While consecrating communion, I described the last supper this way.  

And on the night Jesus gathered his followers around him he brought different people with different ideas to his one table.  And we know that as the grain is scattered through many fields, it is gathered together in this one loaf, united by love. 

At that moment, I needed to hold on to hope for our country and our community.  Too often we think that a "house united" means everyone thinks the same thing, not that our differences are a gift that leads us into a better, stronger community.  Seriously people, we can't all be thumbs. 

Instead of praying for one outcome, I prayed for Wednesday.  I prayed specifically for the people that I know have different political opinions than my own, not because I was “praying for the enemy,” but because I felt called to bring light into the moments of a breach of community and hope for our future together.  My prayers weren’t that their mind be changed, but simply to hold them in love. 

I know in the bottom of my heart that the people on the other side of my thought-out and morally weighed political conclusions also do a great deal of soul-searching and heart-work for their stances.  I cannot assume that it’s out of ignorance or stupidity they have made their decisions.  I respect their judgment and I knew that I would accepted the new President if the election had gone the other way. 

Wednesday comes after a yearlong argument.  Our problems are still there --- a need for governmental income, more sustainable job creation, the ravages of a decade of war, and a climate that is changing with violent outbursts.  I also believe that it is a patriotic duty to hold on to our convictions when your officials disagree with us.  I hope that my conservative friends continue to hold us to standards of fiscal responsibility and respect for our institutions; I hope that my progressive friends continue to work for equal access to the benefits of living in our country. 

But. 

Differences do not equate with the face of evil.  An election going differently than your hopes is not a time to call for revolution or to threaten the lives of those who just became elected.  It is not the time to say that you disown your family because they voted for a different direction for the country.  This is the time to demonstrate to the world that we can move forward despite our strong, opinionated differences.  Democracy is not merely about having an election, but forging a future out of the results of the ballot box.  

I am holding all of us in the light, so that we can show that we are one, united in love.  I am a Christian who believes that we are called into unity, not to be the same, but to hold each other in respect and hope.

Can a Christian Woman Get a Hotel Room While Showing Cleavage?

Thunderstorms in Boston and Newark delayed my first leg of air travel home. I, like many other stranded travelers trying to get to Seattle, needed to find a place to sleep other than concourse benches. My journey at that point included 14 hours of travel time and knew I had at least another 16 hours before I would get home. I was frustrated. Exhausted.

As I approached the front desk, my dusty backpack and roller bag in toe, the clerk's eyes roamed over my body. From my face to my shoes, he slowly looked up and down, pausing in leering enjoyment at my chest each perusal over my body.

At that point I smiled. It was not a friendly smile, but a patented Pacific Northwest variety of smile that can easily be translated into "#$@* you very much." Only after I smiled did he acknowledge that I was at the desk.

His reaction was par for the course that day. I had made a classic travelling error. I wore a shirt that showed a hint of cleavage. The over shirt was sleeveless, see through material, with polka-dots. It also breathes well and is cool in the hot summer months, so I can add a layer of formality without sacrificing comfort. So when I was stuck on the tarmac for an hour in Boston in this travel outfit, I wasn’t sweltering. It’s a fun flirty shirt that is not enormously provocative, but makes me smile at the hint of curves that it shows when I wear it.

You see, I love my body. As a 25 year old woman who spends most of her year in Southern California stating how comfortable I am in my own skin is a startling revelation. I love the color of my hair and I am thrilled that I am inheriting my mother’s sparkling grey. I love the fact that only the right side of my face can curl into a sarcastic half smile. I love the gentle curve out of my stomach, because it means that I am healthy and have enough to eat. I love my mismatched feet. I even after years of awkward self-conciousness love that hint of cleavage.

This is not me speaking from narcissism, but an appreciative gasp of thanks for the miracle of my body. Thank you, God. Thank you for this body and the life that comes along with it.

This prayer is defiant. My body is not something that I am supposed to like. My native and corporate culture can’t sell me creams, make-up, and get thin quick cookbooks if I actually like my body as is.

As for Christianity? Historically, the body has been an embarrassing footnote to the theologies of spiritual salvation, an accident that needed to be conquered by true faith. And being in a woman’s body? Well that was an indication of spiritual unwholesomeness that is to be blamed for the whole sinfulness of humanity. So while you have Paul and Augustine praising women for their spiritual leadership and capabilities, you also have them suggesting that women need to cover themselves to not inspire lustful thoughts of angels or cause spontaneous erections in men. I shouldn’t be so proud of my womanly curves, I should hide them so I do not invoke any hint of sexuality.

Wearing a shirt that even remotely suggests my body is feminine means that I am now allowed to be viewed as a sexual object. This is probably why the clerk at the desk felt that it was acceptable to ogle me. After I handed over my identification and credit card, the clerk walked over to his manager. “Should we let her have a room?” he audibly whispered to his supervisor. The clerk kept a raised eyebrow pointedly directed at my chest.

The supervisor looked over at me and smiled broadly. “I think so. She has an innocent face,” he said to the clerk. “But if we have a loud party we will know where it started.” He chuckled inviting me to share in the joke.

Half way through my journey, exhausted and frustrated, I had just been called a whore. I flushed in anger, embarrassment, and gratefulness that I had a place to sleep that night. I swore that I would never wear that shirt again.

That is the sneaky part of sexism. It makes you blame yourself for the horrible treatment of others. I went to bed that night thinking that the behavior of the clerk was my fault for showing cleavage and standing out while I traveled. I looked at my breasts in the mirror and sighed at the unwanted attention the garnered yet again. I forgot that my body was a miracle. I went to bed without thanking God for this blessing.

The worst part of this story is that I forgot that my body is a gift. Sexism, and the theologies that stem from it, are in direct conflict of my understanding of God’s universally applicable love for us as God created us. Scripturally, there are many verses that uphold that a body as being lovingly created by God or in the image of God. Women are either explicitly mentioned, or can be read into verses that celebrate God’s creation. Many feminist theologies address this consideration of the body, and emphasize the importance of the feminine body in the face of prejudice or violence. It’s hard to remember this when you’re scared or frustrated, but the underlying and deliciously subversive message of these Christian's woman's depicitions of the beauty of the body is this: I am a child of God, made in the image of God and I will not feel ashamed because choose to travel in a shirt that makes me smile.

150 Posts

Last weekend was Annual Conference for Pacific Northwest United Methodists. It felt like a homecoming to sit in a large room with “my people.” Although I have loved and appreciated being at Claremont School of Theology, in large part because it refuses to let me rest on shortcuts, it was refreshing to not be constantly translating my understanding of Christianity or Methodism. Yes, there are places that we have to grow to be the best United Methodists we can be, but this weekend left me hopeful and excited to how we can move forward.

One of the highlights of the conference was the high involvement of Young Adults. We were everywhere! We were heading committees, leading worship giving addresses, running cameras, building labyrinths, and serving in dozens of other instrumental ways. It was so exciting to see how much we have made annual conference our own.

In her excellent Young Person’s address, Emma Donohew’s emphasized the need for our conference utilizing social media. “I know it’s cliché for a young adult to say this, but I will preach the gospel of social networking!” she declared. And she’s right. The future of “first contact” will be online. If someone wants to know what it means to be a Pacific Northwest United Methodist, the internet is the first place that a young adult will look. If we are to be relevant we must be online.

As I sat there I realized that I knew to use social media, but I have only updated my blog once in the past year. My challenge from Emma’s talk is not necessarily to preach the gospel of social networking, but to do it.

So. I am giving myself an accomplishable social networking challenge. 150 blog posts between now and the next convening of annual conference. 3 blog posts a week. And while I can visualize whole months in the future that will be difficult, perhaps this kind of journaling shall be my Wesleyan method for the next year. If I agree wholeheartedly that we should use social media as a form of outreach for the United Methodist Church, it’s time that I take the first step and model that affirmation.

Let's see what happens.

If you want to hear other excellent things that Emma said, here is the entirety of Emma's Address:
(It starts at minute 41)

Watch live streaming video from pnwumc at livestream.com

Blog #1 in Ruth’s Social Networking Gospel Challenge.

A Different Reaction

Once explaining how our actions affect God, a professor offered this story. On September 11^th process theologian, Marjorie Suchocki planted bulbs in her garden. On a day that despair, death, and hatred reigned, she made a prayer of hope and took part in creating life, with sewing plants into the earth.

On this day that is intimately connected to September 11th, I ponder about justice, safety, and grief. I do not find joy in the death of an evil man.

And so, as so many celebrate this death, I will celebrate the things in which I find life:

I rejoice in the young hummingbird flitting from twig to twig in the tree overhead.
I rejoice in the domesticity of taking down and folding fresh laundry.
I rejoice in the feeling of accomplishment of finishing papers.
I rejoice in the bright color of my scarf.
I rejoice in the support of text messages from best friends.
I rejoice in clear mountains, sunlight on my face, wind dancing in my hair, smiling at a stranger, daisies growing out of cracks in cement, the taste of my coffee, and the scent of roses drifting over campus.

Here God, these are my offerings of uncomplicated joy today. Take these delights into your heart. And God, if I may, I hope the joy we find in these simple things will overwhelm us into deep, lasting peace and celebration of life.

Tripp's Words of Wisdom: Six Rules on How to Use Social Media Things and Still Have a Life

1) You’re on twitter, facebook, whatever, you use, pick one of them, where people actually connect to you. Pick a network, make yourself available, connect to people in it.
a) Listening, finding something with an engaging passion. Don’t reply to everything of facebook, every tweet, every blog comment. One place where you are going to look at what they do and get a response from you.
b) Okay, I do that already. Facebook will always get a reply.
c) Or you can solicit e-mails, to avoid fights.
d) You make a way to have a conversation, you pick one. Facebook, comments, it unravels. If they are in your congregation, do it everywhere.
2) Pick one conversation and permeate it.
a. Phil, technically he could blog and dialogue on any of those issues. Something you know everything about. When you know questions, culture. You want them to come to you. (Be an expert). Pick one idea and permeate that conversation. If someone cares at all about that idea, they will come find you.
3) Subscribing to lots of blogs is a good idea – here’s how to do it with efficiency. I subscribe to 300 blogs on my RSS feeder. 5-10, I look at every time that they have something come up? They’re status – awesome, I want to know what they think. Find the 5-10 that are in the conversation you’re in, care about what you say, and regularly engage in those 5-10. Dialogue with them, connect with the people you always read. Know that the other ones are going along and find a connection. Create a place they become investment, they matter because they are attracted to you. Why, and who really thinks you’re interesting. Have that group you’ll always be in conversation with.
4) Consistancy and regularity. Like regularity in the number of posts, the quality and the topics.
a. Regular debate on what that means. My life is interesting, so I’ll just tell you what I feel like. Cool if people who go to your church and your grandma read it. Don’t blog on your new sweater, unless you’re just interested in writing it, and you can make sweater purchasing interesting. I totally disagree with this. Theme, quality and consistency.
5) Get an RSS feed and scan it, read the titles. Good bloggers know that they need to have good titles. Scan, look at the titles, and decide whether you want to click on it. Another trick. Google reads blogs to you. While you’re scanning blogs, it’s reading you a previous one. Tweets of conent, schedule once.
Comment on a blog post, it wins fidelity more than anything else. Retweet think you like the title, posting a comment means that you’ve read it. It’s converting yourself to someone’s post and they will like you.

What my Buffy the Vampire Slayer T-Shirt Tells me about Jesus.

Tribes, are our visible narratives of self-identity by association with a group. It’s who we want the world to see who we are. According Seth Godin a Tribe is an organic event. Not just something being in community is something that we as humans are evolutionarily geared to be, but that a gathering of has an individual choose to associate with and through that association they give me identity.

As I was reading through Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us, I couldn’t help but think about my own examples of tribe membership. I often describe myself as a nerd, which other nerds get and causes non-nerds to worry for my self-esteem.
Nerd-dom has long been an important subculture, which yes is highly influenced by science fiction and comic books, but really is about:
· imagination,
· utopian community, and a
· hopeful future.

Although the stereotype of the nerd may be the person who hides behind her computer nerds have long been about forming community IRL. While there is no secret handshake, there are certainly ways to measure “nerd cred.” For example, when meeting a new nerd, I might mention that I follow Neil Gaiman on twitter, I can tell you the name of the commanding officers for each Star Trek series, and have been reading megatokyo since comic 83. Yet nothing, absolutely nothing, can beat the establishment of nerd cred through the almighty t-shirt.

T-shirts are a visible way to align myself with a particular tribe. In the nerd world it’s not so much a Sharks vs. Jets situation, a person in a Superman t-shirt would not automatically hate a person wearing a Spider-Man shirt, as much as it is a method of sorting. For example, when I wear my Buffy the Vampire Slayer T-shirt, I expect to get into conversations about why Fox has no understanding of tribe loyalty and why producing video content for the internet is the way of entertainment’s future; I would not expect to have conversations about why Asimov is better than Heinlein or Girls in Refrigerators. In the age of the internet, a t-shirt has also become a way of supporting an artist whose work you particularly enjoy. There are webcomic artists who are able to completely support themselves and their family on t-shirt sales alone. T-Shirts are about preference, declaring knowledge, and ultimately about willingness to support creative thinkers, the glue to our community.

The Lessons from the Obama Tribe

T-shirt declarations are not just from one branch of nerdyness. One of my friends bought a great deal of “Obama chic” during the 2008 campaign and he was even more thrilled when his conservative step-mother bought him an Obama shirt with the declaration “Hope” across it for his birthday. For him, wearing the t-shirt, putting the campaign card in his window, and playing Obama’s key campaign speeches for any roommate walking down the hall. Obama was the leader of a tribe of people, because he was able to inspire people into thinking about how they related to a politician and politics differently.

Godin understands leaders in a different light than how we usually understand leaders to work. First of all Godin understands WORK differently. The Tribe understanding of occupation is the simple idea that if you love what you do for a living, you’ll be a much more interesting individual. Oh sure you’ll be happier doing work that you love, but you’ll also be a credit to your society because your energy and creativity will be more productive and world-changing. Leaders are people who are able to nurture curiosity in a way that it becomes productive to society. They are able to inspire people to take a leap from doing work to ensure a paycheck and risking to fall in love with work that might not pay as much, but is ultimately more rewarding for everyone around them. Most importantly leaders are able to guide individual creativity and channel it into fulfilling a need or goal for the whole tribe or the rest of society.

Obama was this type of leader for my friend. He took off a semester from school to do what I teasingly called “Work for Obama.” Even though he was set by the Obama administration to God-knows-where, and worked more than 100 hours a week, and even though he had to sacrifice what was familiar and time with those he loved, he was happy. He leads campaigns now. He has been inspired, by one leader to become a leader.

Buffy T-Shirt + Jesus = Rebranding Christianity

The third key component to being a tribe is marketing. Now being my generally anti-consumerist self, I have to admit that this was the idea that was the hardest for me to swallow. Godin declares:

Marketing changed the idea of stability. It’s human nature – we still assume the world is stable… and we’re wrong. We’re wrong because the dynamics of marketing and storytelling and the incessant drumbeat of advertising have taught us to be restless in the face of stability. And the Internet just amplifies this lesson.

I worry about this part of our culture. If it’s not new, it’s disposable. And if it’s disposable, we’ll throw it out. Forever 21 is a perfect example of this – in as little as six weeks runway fashion can now be worn by everyone with a spare twenty dollars. And in about three months, it can be thrown away. I fret about my car’s gasoline that seems to disappear, but really creates trash (carbon dioxide, smog) that we don’t or won’t see. Our desire for the new, the pleasure that derives from these goods, doesn’t entirely give us a chance to fully come to terms with how to deconstruct or recycle the old.

Then I began to think, what is marketing of the new is just another way to explain openness to creativity? What if being in a tribe not just about association with like-minded people, but an excitement about what these people will bring to the table next?

To go back to my Buffy t-shirt, I wear that with pride, because I like to be a part of a group that is familiar with Joss Whedon’s work. Eventually, I will watch whatever Joss Whedon writes. Yes, even the really gross, scary horror stuff (and not just because @gravelittleloli will make me), but because I’m always interested in the stories that Joss tells. There is something about his archetypes of strong, yet vulnerable, yet loving women intrigue me and his witty dialogue always makes me laugh. Even though I get annoyed at the fact that he enjoys creating romantic tension just for the sheer joy of murdering them, I still get pulled in each time. I’m curious about what Joss has to say next, and so I keep coming back. I belong to this tribe, I advertise that I belong to this tribe, because I am curious about what will come next and I want to be a part of that discussion.

Which brings me of all places to Christianity. You see, I think Jesus was a Leader in a tribal sense. There seemed to be a level of inspiration and guidance of creativity that was embodied in Jesus that is astonishing. There is also a level of inspiration and hope that drew people in. I bet that people following Jesus were a hundred thousand times more eager to hear his next sermon than I am to see a sequel to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-long Blog.

Today though, I’m not sure that the church has that ability to be encapsulated by a t-shirt. I don’t think I could wear a Methodist T-shirt that declares “I write John Wesley Fanfiction” and expect to have random conversations about grace and social justice at a Christian convention. My Christianity has lost its ability to be conveyed in t-shirt form. We’ve lost our ability to market – to be able to be creative and exciting in a publically expressible form of loyalty. Yet what I find significant in nerdyness, is in fact, what I also find available in Christianity. Imagination, Utopian community, and creativity are all there in Christianity, why can't I express that easily?

I think for Methodists, mainline protestants, or progressive Christians, our significant landfill has finally caught up to us. We can’t just dispose of our old ideas, because our old ideas are so prominent in everyone else’s minds, that they stuck when we try to explain the new. We need to be able to explain our tribe better, we need to make it

So, Godin’s challenge is not just to identify tribes or to understand how they work, but is a call to action about the ways in which we can lead them. He thinks that each and every single one of us has the potential to be a leader. I think my call as a future Christian leader of a progressive, mainline church is not to be to see new tribes and create them, but instead to understand what makes Christianity as awesome as being a nerd, and go from there.

[Grammar edit and sentence tightening occurred. And I added tags. RM]

A Confession, Eccumenicism and Proximity

I have a confession. Talking to other Christians about faith, can at times, is more stressful than talking to other people from different religions. Perhaps it is because I have more at stakes – since the conservative, evangelical, substitution-atonement, Biblical literalist Christians will affect how my progressive, pluralist, liberation theology, historical-critical definition of Christianity at the very least for making the word Christian unintelligible. Or perhaps the reason discussion among Christians is so uncomfortable, is because while other faiths are strictly off limits to proselytize to, convincing other Christians of the truth of progressive Christianity seems to be allowed. At the heart of these conflicts and discomfort is the idea that I am right, and that when other people understand/believe/practice Christianity differently, they are wrong.

John Caputo, in What Would Jesus Deconstruct talks about “proximity.” It is understanding:

that the other person is a relation ‘without relation’ in a the sense that the other person is constituted by an interiority or an interior secret that we can never access, a secret inner self that we can never really reach or know. (Only God knows what is in the heart of each of us.)

While, another is deeply important for who we are and how we understand ourselves, our ability to every fully and completely understand the other is imperfect. While we can be close to other individuals, what goes on in the heart’s of another can never be fully communicated, just as what we say can never be fully understood.

Yet for Caputo, this is not a hardship, but a blessing. He explains that:

The relation with the other person is therefore a journey we never complete, where that incompleteness is not imperfection, but testimony to the perfect excess of the other, it is not a loss, but a source of endless novelty and discovery.

Knowing the other with absolute certainty would be boring, because you would be able to predict everything this other person does. It would not lead to any change for either of you, because there would be nothing that would challenge you enough to change. It’s like the computer at the end of War Games, running through each variable possibility for Thermonuclear War, and seeing that there are no winnable outcomes, and so the computer does nothing. Not seeing the future, not knowing completely what the other person will do gives that person the chance to surprise you, to engage you, and to help you grow.

This unknowingness is an invitation for engaging with that person and traveling on a path of relationship together. In exchange for understanding the person completely, we are given the opportunity to be affected by the other. Our relationship need not be a quick moment of perfectly boring understanding, but a life-long path of wonder and discovery.

While this works wonderfully for individuals, this creates problems for me when I start thinking of those individuals in terms of their Christian context, because it challenges me to change my understanding of how Christianity works for the other. You see, I think that I already know precisely how Christianity works and functions for a fundamentalist, and therefore I see their future in a blink of an eye and am bored (or frightened) by it. Yet this is not real knowledge, because I cannot fully understand what a fundamentalist thinks anymore than I can fully understand what a progressive Christian thinks (although I assume I know that too). I have closed off my own potential to engage that person because of my own false conviction that I know their heart. Through this, I refuse to let the other Christian teach me.

For Caputo, this journeying with another person is an act of risk. For me, there is a great deal of potential for being hurt by engaging with this other Christian voice, including the perception that my call is not to ordained ministry, because women cannot have authority over men. I know that this risk is relatively minor on the scale of how much people can hurt each other. Yet this journey is not just about risk, but also about love. The reason we are vulnerable to the risk, is because we do this with love. The reason that we are vulnerable to change, is because of how our love causes us to commit to that other person, both how we perceive them now and what they will grow to be, and how what they do to surprise us, will change us.

In proximity, what is “right” and “wrong” becomes less important. I stop claiming that I know what is “right” about Christianity, in order to learn about beauty, truth, and hope from the Christian Other. Ecumenicism then is not about uncomfortable, awkward moments when people start asking who’s allowed to bless and take communion/Eucharist/the sacrament, but instead a conversation about why remembering that in the past is important for Christians now. While I will never be able to fully understand what goes on in an evangelical’s mind, I will be able to recognize their journey as important to my own Christian path. It’s only when we stop assuming what is “right” about Christianity, but listen to the novelty from the pluralities of Christianities that Ecumenicism becomes possible.

How we say it.

Talking to someone not only is about the words we say, but also the way we say it. Conversations hinge on the body language someone exhibits. If someone crosses their arms, the conversation can go from friendly to tense in a flicker of an eye. When we’re tense, what we say in a conversation changes completely.

Communication technology is the same way. What technology we use, shapes what we say. Shane Hipps notes in Flickering Pixels:

Marshall McLuhan, the oracle of the electronic age, reveals the error of this assumption when he says that ‘the medium is the message.’ If the first truth is that our methods change, the message automatically changes along with them. You can’t change methods without changing your message – they’re inseparable.” (25)

The medium by which I communicate with my grandmother changes everything. I send her short e-mails with forty words and usually a silly picture attached; Grandma sends me cards in the mail with a silly news story clipped from the paper. Neither of us writes back. Our phone conversations are longer, we banter, and we discuss everything from family history to theology and politics. These are the same two people, yet what we say changes completely by the mediums we use to communicate with. It is fortunate that this 90 year old grandmother and this 24 year old grandchild have the telephone, otherwise we’d never be able to meet in the middle and hear what the other person has to say. Our ability to communicate vastly improves with finding a technology that works for both of us.

In theology terms, Hipps explains that the medium that we use to talk about God changes the ways in which we communicate about God. The way that the printing press changed Christianity was not only in terms of reading the Bible, but also in the ways that we organized our congregations. He points out pews inside churches, which line people up like letters on a page, are not found in medieval churches (47). The printing press changed everything for Christianity. We changed our ways of thinking about and constructing Christianity because of technology.

He also suggests that the printing press changed the way we understood theology. A sentence is a logical, linear string of characters to produce a whole thought. Therefore, Hipps sees those of us who have been trained in reading and writing think in these logical linear ways. In Hipps understanding, theology became a linear, logical understanding that valued progressive, factual thought over feelings. How we understood God and talked about God, changed because of this technology.

Yet, like the example of communication with my grandmother, communication between God and humanity goes both ways. Hipps describes Flickering Pixels as both the way we communicate about God, and the way that God reaches out to us: “It’s about the way God communicates with us and the way we communicate God to the world” (13-14). God uses different mediums to communicate with humanity. At first it was the temple in Jerusalem, later God used Jesus. Using the Logos passage in John 1, Hipps points to the ways in which the message and the medium were embodied in the same person. Through Jesus, the ideas and words of God, become perfectly communicable. Interestingly, a human, is the ultimate communication technology for God.

Yet some parts of what is communicated remain the same; some parts of each new communication technology build from another communication technology. So when the Jesus medium talks about love, Jesus is using the same message from previous technologies, for example the Prophet Isaiah communication model. My grandmother asks about my eating habits and exercise routine or tells me that she loves me whether it is through phone or card. So while communication mediums do change, some parts of the message, like God loves, doesn’t change.

Unfortunately, there is also the problem of the fourth dimension of technology. This is the fact that technology can sometimes trap us in unexpected ways. Hipps calls this the “underside” of technology. For instance, city walls while providing protection during a siege could also be a trap during the time of a city fire; video surveillance cameras provide identification of those who commit a crime, but also invade the privacy of people (Hipps, 37). The response to the God Communicating Technology also can have flaws that get brought forward with each new technological advantage. Despite God’s use of many different people to communicate, God’s message, that gets regularly forgotten. Deborah, was excluded from the list of Judges in Bible concordances for centuries; Mary Magdalene was excluded from Paul’s list of people who witnessed the risen Christ. Even though well intentioned people do use this medium to talk about God, they in fact sometimes bring in the underside of technology as well.

How we say what we say matters. Not only does how we say it matter, it changes what we say too. So, if a Theology after Google, is a theology that takes rapid technological changes into account, then it also needs to understand the ways in which talk about God will change what we say about God. If we are to take this theology seriously, we need to be extra observant of what precisely it is we are pulling forward from past mediums, looking for both the potential beauty from past mediums, and be aware of the past mistakes.

Did talking about the sermon make you happy?

According to a recent New York Times article, a study suggested that those who regularly took part in deep, thoughtful, and existential conversations were, by both internal and external observation, happier.

Considering that I am thinking a lot about church, the internet, and the church and internet, this article provides an interesting challenge. Do we in fact have these kinds of deeply connecting conversations on the internet? Does the internet give us the opportunity to meet more people that we can have these kinds of conversations? Does its openness make people hesitant and uneasy with “putting themselves out there” and being in these kinds of deep conversation for the whole world to see?

And then the second question became, do we have these conversations in the church? Does coffee hour, bible study, or the sermon give us not only a sense of community, but a place of illuminating conversations where we can enter into meaningful theological discussions that leave each other enlightened and enriched? At the heart of Christianity are stories about God and Jesus and the ways in which meaning erupted into the world. Does our church give us the opportunity to meet people that we can have these kinds of deep, meaningful eruptions and the language with which to be able to talk about them? Does the church provide safe-places to be able to enter into these kinds of conversations?

For me, deep conversations are about finding meaning with another person. They are important, blessed events. Therefore it is a challenge to both the church medium and the internet medium that in order to provide happiness, they need to provide ways for people to dive into deep, careful, thoughtful conversation. And it is a challenge to suggest that we need to think of new radical ways that these mediums can be happiness-inducing by supporting voices and making opportunity for difficult, but ultimately meaningful conversations.

Sexuality 2.0: A Challenge

First of all this post is not just about homosexuality, although we do touch upon that some. In fact, it seems that the “question of homosexuality and the church” is perhaps even a distraction away from the heart of the matter: Christians don’t know how to talk about any kind of sexuality.

But before we can talk about sexuality, we need to talk about bodies. And bodies are a point of complication for Christians. We divide our bodies from our spirit. Our bodies are flawed, needing to be conquered by the spirit, needing to be overcome by a will stronger than what we say. Christians privilege the will, the mind, and reason over our bodies. It’s an unequal dualism.
Everyone has a body, but not every body is created equal. Some bodies are reduced to what we simply see; some bodies are not even visible at all:

The Latina body is a particular body that is invisible, even when radicalized and sexualized, it’s invisible.

With these bodies, both visible and invisible, we are told how we fit into our society.
These actions are even more prefabricated when discussing sexuality. We have heteronormative, monogamous, and married sexuality. Yet even this solid absolutely model gets frayed at the edges, frayed by practice.

So perhaps a Sexuality After Google, is a sexuality 2.0. It is something that changes the way that we relate and explore to our bodies.

Sexuality 1.0	Sexuality 2.0
Stable	Ambiguity
Male/Female	Gender Queer
Hetereo/Homosexual	Queer
Prefabricated Narratives for Sexuality	Constructed Narratives
Identities	Identification

Instead of understanding sexuality as a stable identity (I am gay, I am straight), then perhaps we can understand sexuality as a fluid, creative identification. Our identity is not told to us, but something we can borrow from, perform, and narrate. Our sexuality is not a permanent category to fit into, but instead part of our stories from which change, grow and elaborate over time.
Then perhaps if we understand sexuality this way, we won’t be Christians that “Need the gays (gaze)” We won’t be a church that uses homosexuality as a litmus test, but instead allow us to have a conversation about sexuality ALL sexual identifications can discuss this beautiful, ambiguous, and powerful experience.

"Saints and Sages, not Religious Professionals"

Brian McLaren skyped in to our class last week to talk about his new book "A New Kind of Christianity" (and which we all reviewed various chapters, including my post here.) At the end of the chat, our TA asked him if he Brian would like to offer us any advice.

He told us "The world is looking for saints and sages, not religious professionals."

And then he followed that up with this story, which I will quickly paraphrase to the best of my ability:

McLaren is good friends with his next door neighbor and their relationship has grown and blossomed so that he became close to his neighbor's family as well as his neighbor. His next door neighbor’s father grew ill and was dying and the neighbor asked McLaren to come visit his father in the hospital. One day as McLaren was walking to his car, he just got a strong urge to go see his neighbor’s father at the hospital. He sat there in the hospital praying and holding the father's hand. He left to go to the parking lot and before he made it to the car, his neighbor called. The neighbor’s father had passed away.

The world is looking for saints and sages and not religious professionals.

And I knew in an instant that YES! I wanted to do this. His story reminded me of countless other stories of mine, which, while not as dramatic, were places that I felt like I was doing ministry. These were not United Methodists, but still people who needed love. And I loved doing it. I love being with these people. As I heard that story, visions of how I could keep doing that, just that and be fulfilled, happy and joyful for the rest of my life.

Of course just as soon as these grand visions flashed through my mind, I immediately ran into a stop sign. "But how would I eat?" I asked myself. I don't want or need a paycheck for fancy things, in fact I am quite comfortable with the fact that my chosen profession won't lead to a lot of extraneous bonuses, but I rather like the idea of having a roof over my head, food on the table, and hot water for a shower. These visions of ministry --- I'm not sure if they would ever translate into these three essentials for my life.

I think that this internal conflict may be a microcosmic example of the macrocosmic problem with the mainline churches of today. I think we really, really want to be out there and being the holy people the world is looking for, but are worried about what we think are the essentials. We do want to do this, but we also want a church to meet, to pay our pastors, and Bibles in the pews.

So this is what I'm sitting with. How do we have an ecclesiology and an imagination that allows us to be both? Is it possible? I dearly wish and hope so.

When Jesus Said Love Your Neighbor He Meant Pagans, Buddhists, and Athiests Too: Brian McLaren and Pluralism

Pluralism is the idea of “Can’t we just all get along?” This question for Christians becomes especially acute when dealing with religious pluralism, because it is necessary to respect and understand other traditions. Christians have seriously screwed this up in the past; our relationship to the religious other has often been one of violence, destruction and outright murder. We need to create new ways of relating to other people, and we need to figure this out quickly. In my experience it is this form of intolerance that causes some of the worst backlash against Christians.

To start off with, there are two models that people have basically proposed for why and how to be pluralistic:

The Simpsons Model

The American religious landscape has changed greatly. No longer is it safe to assume that each person that we meet is Mainline Protestant Christian, but instead it is a very real possibility that our neighbors, our teachers, or our coworkers follow a much different spiritual path than our own. Pluralism, that ability to know and respect other traditions, becomes a necessary technique for survival as a good citizen in the United States. Diana Eck wrote the seminal book, Pluralism in America, about just this topic. But if you want a more entertaining model to see how pluralism works in the United States today look no further than the television show The Simpsons. One of the major themes of the show is how religious differences can lead to conflict and how eventually understanding leads to a stronger community. Springfield is a typical American town and pluralism has become a very typical American question.

The Apocalyptic Model

There is another urgent model for the necessity of pluralism. Many point to the nuclear age that we live in as justification enough for needing to understand each other. The potential for violence and the ability to destroy all human life is at humanity’s fingertips. Preventing total destruction is a relatively new responsibility for mankind. Since religion has become a major justification for violence, people tend to get nervous over religious conflict.

This is the approach that Brian McLaren starts with. He says:

We all woke up again today in a world where Christians, Muslims, and Jews (along with adherents of many other religions) are either killing one another or planning new ways to kill one another, and many believe that in doing so they are obeying and even pleasing and honoring God.

McLaren shows here how religion sometimes can be used to justify this killing. This model for pluralism does not set out so much how we should relate to each other, but instead emphasizes why we need to figure this out. And we had better do it fast.

McLaren's Model

However, the brilliance of McLaren’s approach to pluralism is that while he frames the necessity for understanding each other in the global sense, he approaches the problem on a deeply personal level. He doesn’t map out responses for Christianity on at a state or international level, but instead focuses on three steps any individual Christian can take to becoming more Pluralistic:

1) Repent of crimes done in the name of Christianity
2) Deprogram knee-jerk, trained responses to the idea of accepting other traditions.
3) Find a new, Christian model for dealing with the Other.

Repentance: Educate Yourself
To repent, you need to educate yourself. Christians have forgotten our history of encountering other religions, and by encounter I mean for the most part abusing, enslaving, or murdering those of other traditions. However, those we have harmed in the past do remember this history. “They remember,” McLaren says repeatedly. To be able to enter into religious dialogue, we need to be aware of this history of violence so that we can apologize for it and overcome it.

Deprogram: John 14:6 doesn’t mean what you think it means
One of the struggles Christians have with pluralism is the idea of superiority in both terms of having the most evolved spiritual tradition and having an afterlife paradise for just us Christians. McLaren tackles John 14:6, the verse that is often used as Jesus reserving God just for those who follow in Jesus's footsteps. Instead of looking at this verse as a worldwide declaration for Christian exclusivism, McLaren does a thoughtful exegesis of the verse IN CONTEXT with the rest of the passage. Instead McLaren points to how this is a message of comfort and hope to his disciples, NOT a prescription for kicking everyone else out of heaven.

McLaren suggests that the reason that we think of this verse when asked about pluralism is because we have adopted an “us/them” model from the Greco-Roman culture. This us/them then is not a genuine part of Christianity, but instead an unfortunate cultural artifact from a dominant group wanting to maintain their secure place at the top of society despite adopting this radical new spiritual movement. Therefore being good Christians does not require this exclusivist outlook on other traditions, but instead could actively encourage ways to love our neighbor including their religious outlook.

New Model: Love One Another.
McLaren stresses that the new model also needs to be rooted in Christian choices, images and perfection. He explains:

[Christians] also feel uncomfortable with the win-lose, “it’s either us or them’ mind-set they have inherited, because they know this mind-set too easily descends into prejudice, dehumanization, and violence toward the other. But they also feel uncomfortable with the “Whatever you believe is fine, as long as you’re sincere” approach. Just as the former fuels fear resentment, and even hatred toward “them,” the latter undermines commitment and identity among “us.” I share this ambivalence, because I think both dangers are real.

Relativism, the reduction of everything to equally the same, creates a problem for Christians who intend to be a pluralist. Pluralists need to walk a fine line between respecting other traditions and yet still finding value rooted and caused by our own particular spiritual path.
McLaren’s solution to this problem is to not be a relativist, but instead be a Christian Pluralist. He points to several scripture passages, including Paul insisting that God treats all equally (Romans 5:12-21), the tradition of the religious outsider doing God's will in the Hebrew Scriptures, and Jesus stating "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another" (John 13:34). These examples provides a model for the way we can interact with the religious other and do so within a framework compatible with Christian teachings. Christian love of the neighbor really can expand to include the whole world.

Critique of McLaren’s Model
The problem with this model for pluralism is that McLaren tends to use religious groups interchangeably. This subtly recreates the us/them dynamic that he was trying so hard to eliminate. Although I recognize that McLaren is focusing on the way that Christians should act with the religious other, it still strikes me as deeply problematic to think that Hindus and Atheists and Jews could be interchangeable. Not only do Christians need to change our own behavior, we also need to understand the distinctions between these very diverse and separate groups. Although I recognize that it is incredibly difficult to do that in this small of a chapter, undoing the us/them distinctions really does need to start with breaking it down even when these conversations are most cramped.

McLaren suggestions do give us a model of behavior that will start good conversations with the religious other. How those conversations will progress will not be the same, because what is of utmost concern to an atheist will not be the same thing that drives a Jew to keep kosher. However, acting out in deep neighborly love will lead to rich discussions. Christians need to start and take part in these dialogues, especially if we are going to be good neighbors and effective world leaders. McLaren’s model teaches us as Christians how to listen and that will put us in a very strong starting place for how to find our voice in a world that needs Pluralism and a thoughtful Christianity.


(This post is a classroom wide series of posts about Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian.)