Our Program Director for Campus Ministry, Don Romsa, shared the following blessing for the new academic year with all ELCA campus ministry staff across the country. It's attributed to St. Thérèse of Lisieux and St. Theresa of Avila, and the words beautifully sum the prayers of many who are just now diving in to the college experience, some for the first time, and others after years of service as faculty and staff.
May today there be peace within. May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith. May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you May you be confident knowing you are a child of God. Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. These words inspired me, not just as a prayer, but as a commissioning to enter in to the vocation of education. With that in mind, there's the following reflections flow out of this engagement with St. Thérèse, St. Theresa, and Don, As you enter campus this year, perhaps for the first time or perhaps once again since time immemorial, may you find an exciting conviction that God has called you here. Try new things. Consider the value of other opinions and others' beliefs. Discuss your differences. Be shaped by coursework and relationships. Take risks when you can. Face your fear. Find safety when you need it. Have fun that doesn't threaten your life and health. Go to class and know that there's much more to this place than class. Research, but not just in the lab. Read, but not just the assignments. Ask questions of professors and cooks, of housekeepers and administrators. Serve others. Thank the people that are serving you. Confront hate with love. Confront evil with good. When you succeed, celebrate that with humility. Appreciate the people who helped get you here. When you fall, get back up. When you're hurt, let others help you find healing. Don't do this alone. We're better off together. Seek knowledge and wisdom and learn the difference between the two. God has called you here.
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I commend the film Spotlight to all people, but especially Christians. Not only is it an exquisitely-shaped piece of storytelling, but it chronicles vital history in the church's relation to sexuality, authority, and abuse. When we reflect on clerical abuse of power, a few things come to my mind. The first is that these are terrible sins, committed by people imbued with incredible authority by the people that they serve. The second is that there are other terrible sins by the system, where others ignore the abuse or, even worse, try to cover it up or justify it. All of this is wrapped up in the fact that there's more good priests than bad, more good to the church than evil. This does not mean we get to ignore the evil; quite the contrary. Instead, this means we must directly address the evil. We must remove people from power who can't be trusted with the authority they're given, We must admit the fault both of the individual and the system. We must use the good we're capable of to repent, and furthermore, to transform the system such that others won't suffer the same abuses again. In the previous paragraph, we could replace the words priest, pastor, church, clerical, and any of their other associated terms with the word police, and the story would remain true. There are some police who've abused their power, particularly in relation to excessive use of force. The recent shooting of Charles Kinsey is only a recent testimony in the tales of Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, and so many others. These deadly situations happen disproportionately more often to black men than other segments of the population. Just as any other citizen, when police officers use excessive force that injures or ends life, they deserve to be held accountable. I've a number of family members in the law enforcement community, and many more family friends beyond those. I'm certain they expect me, as a pastor, to do my job without abusing the people under my care. That's a fair and just expectation, and if that's the case, More directly, I want them to expect that of me. I have the same expectation of them, and everyone who chooses the vocation of law enforcement. When pastors and members of law enforcement enter their vocations, each make a promise to "never betray...the public trust" or "care for God's people and...do not betray their confidence." Now, I do not pretend that my job entails the same risks as those of a police officer. I'm not naive enough to believe that or make that comparison. What I am saying is that, in very different but complementary ways, pastors and police officers are called to vocations of public trust and public care. Let's be clear on that. Law enforcement is a vocation. We need police officers who care about the entire community, who seek safety of all those under their care, who serve and protect. The work of social justice is better served by police that also want justice. Many, many officers want that and police their communities with that desire at the forefront. When the actions of others work against that, the appropriate response isn't to angrily condemn all police, nor is it to blindly support all police. It's to recognize that mistakes are made, that justice means removing some people from authority and addressing the issues in the system that work to protect bad officers instead of ensuring justice for the community. We live in a world today where positions of authority no longer receive automatic respect. Pastors, police officers, soldiers, teachers, politicians, truly any public figure, must earn the respect of those that we serve. This, I believe, is a good thing, because it reemphasizes the importance of integrity within each of these vocations. Some people simply aren't suited for these positions of public service, whether by their temperament, ability, or prejudice. Rather than assume that someone deserves trust because they wear a clerical collar or a badge, instead we now must learn who our people are and how we can best serve them. We must be vulnerable with them to earn their trust so that, when the time comes, we make decisions that align with the promises made at the time of our commissioning. In other words, to redeem our churches and our departments, it does not behoove us to decry, "not all of us are bad" or worse, "there's no problem to see here," or even worse, "the rules that apply to you don't apply to us." Instead, we must work diligently to redeem our professions and to restore the public trust. In other words, we must purge from our ranks both the people who cause such irreparable harm within our communities and eradicate the systemic dysfunction that allows such abuses of power to exist in the first place. My point, and perhaps my plea, is this. Being committed to good policing and defending the value of black lives aren't mutually exclusive options. The best of policing recognizes this and seeks to foster communities where all lives are seen as valuable, as deserving of the same treatment from authorities, as not just citizens of a community, but as equal members of a human family. Chief Chris Magnus of Richmond, California famously held a Black Lives Matter sign as a testimony to this truth: not that black lives matter more than blue lives or white lives, but because so many black lives have been compromised by our culture, including some bad policing, we must remind everyone that black lives matter just as much as police lives, white lives, and any other life. Pastors and police officers are called, in different ways, to care for the lives of all in their care. As such, we should have the highest of expectations for one another, demand consequences when we use our power inappropriately, and ensure that our systems work to serve and protect the people we're called to serve. When we expect the best from our public servants, we honor the integrity of their vocation. When we who are in these positions of authority expect the best from one another, we honor not just the office or the badge or the clerical, but we honor the people who took vows to care for their community at all costs. Let's hope, pray, and work for the best out of our cops and our clergy. As we Lutherans know, sometimes that means reform is necessary for people and systems. Though all the facts remain hidden to us
the fact remains you didn't deserve to die. Who will speak your names before the ages? We will speak. I will speak. Fear be damned. Selah. Opened fire into your bodies. Once whole, now broken the body of God. Fear be damned and you be raised, raised with Christ. Fire your baptism, flame your purity, remembered by the saints, the sages, restored one day to us, but not today. Inconceivable the loss, your absence. Incontrovertible the injustice. Even still, now attempts to justify eviscerate your dignity, memory; never is this acceptable, never. No one deserves to go this way, witnessed dead and innocent by innocents. Someday promises of deliverance seem petty, weak, frail failures on our ears. Deliver us from evil, uniformed, donned whatever clothes that hide sin's white face. Extend a promise - not words - in actions. Enter in justice's day. Evermore a cry for change, for peace, equality; and yet, until then. lament rises up. Dead. Two friends dead. Alton, Philando, dead. Dead. Two friends dead. Friends of Christ, friends of ours. We're officially the subject of the local paper op-ed. You can find this letter to the editor in the Radford New Journal. Our Steering Team is already composing a response. You'll find that in the RNJ soon enough. There's plenty of reasons from financial, logistical, social, and even foreign policy perspectives that suggest resettling refugees is not only something that we're able to do well, but that it's right thing to do as a community. My purpose here, though, is expressly theological. Matthew 25, some of Jesus's last words before his crucifixion, remind his listeners that what "you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me," and conversely, "when you haven’t done it for one of the least of these, you haven’t done it for me." Every human is created in God's image (see Genesis 1-3), no one more so than any other. We're all deserving of care, assistance, and relief from tragedy (see Amos 5), no one more so than any other. We're all sisters and brothers of Jesus (see Matthew 25), and when we offer compassion to those on the lowest societal strata, we serve both them and Jesus through them. This applies not only to Christians, but to people of all faiths and no particular faith. This applies not only to Americans, but to people who call other countries home and whose nations have been wrenched away by violent extremists. The call of Jesus sends us to embrace not just those who are like us, to relieve not just those who share our religion, to support not just those who are our allies, but to pray for those who persecute us, to overcome evil with good. What better response is there to a destabilized international community, caused in part by our own government's actions and in part by other governments who seek to seize and retain power,, than to face that evil with the good of relief for the refugees created by such violence? As I told a concerned citizen on the phone last week, it isn't my job as a pastor to just protect Christians. It's to offer good news in word and deed to all people. I'm not called to love Christians more than others, but instead to offer Christ's love to all, with whatever needs they bring, whether Muslims (or Christians) from Syria, Buddhists (or Hindus) from Burma, or Christians, agnostics, atheists, and all others who already call the New River Valley their home. So, we'll continue to work with partners like Beans and Rice and Bobcat Backpacks to provide relief to the hungry here. We'll continue to work with the Women's Resource Center to provide a place of safety and a new start for victims of relationship violence. We'll continue to welcome refugees. We're financially able to do this as a community. We've got connections in the housing and job market already lined up. We've got a community that believes its welcoming, and an opportunity for them to put that into practice. Most importantly, as people of faith, we've got sisters and brothers of Jesus who've become the least of these due to circumstances beyond their control. Bound together in the God who created us all, we share spiritual DNA with these people, Before us, Jesus lays a harrowing reminder: what you do and don't do for the least of these is your very same response to me. In the words of one of our forebears in faith, "As for me and my house we will serve the Lord." On Memorial Day, two things caught my eye. The first was this meme, from my denomination's Facebook page, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. After some introspection about how I felt relating this passage from John's Gospel to the sacrifices of soldiers, I shared it on my page without incident. More on that later. The second thing that I came across was an article from last year, titled Why I'm A Pacifist But I Still Celebrate Memorial Day. A friend from the traditionally pacifistic Brethren tradition shared this, which sparked some good conversation about the author's general intent, as well as some of the particular points within the article. The author writes from the unique perspective of a pacifist within the military, namely the medical reserves. Like myself, the author also lives life in the odd space of a pacifist within a military family. My grandfather was a ball turret gunner in a B-17 during WWII, was shot down, and spent the last months of the war as a POW. My uncle served in Vietnam and my father served in Germany as part of the Medical Service Corps during that war. My brother is continues to serve, now as a Lieutenant Colonel. This has led to many interesting conversations around Christmas dinner, and more importantly, to many people I consider friends who've served in combat across the globe. These are important background pieces for that author's reflections, and for my own. The author, whose identity is not detailed beyond the above markers, reflects upon C.S. Lewis's The Last Battle, and in particular a scene wherein Aslan counts faithful service in the army of Tash, the enemies leader, as service to him in the resurrection. From this point, the author concludes, "God turns all dedicated service into beautiful and willing sacrifice unto Christ himself." In short, while the author is a pacifist, s/he sees loyalty as an acceptable sacrifice to God, even if misguided, even if shaped by violence, That's how one pacifist pastor commemorates Memorial Day. I understand the desire to make this move and see God in this way; I simply disagree at a fundamental theological level. Let me be clear about two things. First, in the resurrection, God will look at some things about our lives and our choices and say an unequivocal "No." Second, there's only one acceptable sacrifice to God, and that's Jesus. God needn't turn our misguided attempts at fidelity into obedience; rather, in Christ God's extended forgiveness to us for all of our unfaithful behavior and decisions. These are vital distinctions to make. There are certain things within any action that might honor God. The courage displayed by soldiers, the self-sacrificial behaviors made by many, the loyalty shown to their comrades in arms and to the people they're called to defend and protect. Those are undeniable goods. Yet, even while God says "Yes" to those things, this does not mean God affirms every behavior required of a soldier. God's given us life to promote life, not take it. God's redeemed us to pursue reconciliation, not division by death. When we enter into eternity, God doesn't magically make our failures into faithfulness. This is a subtle difference, but an important one. God takes broken things and makes them beautiful, but God does not affirm the brokenness. Transformation doesn't mean that our sins are honored, but that they are burned away like impurities from ore. What I mean to say is this: as a pacifist, I do not believe that God turns all dedicated service into divine service because service that takes life is contrary to the abundant life trajectory of God's Kingdom. Yet, this does not mean we're all damned. Neither does God abandon us because of our faults. In Christ, God forgives us the things we have done and the things we have left undone. God does take our brokenness and make it beautiful, but like a potter with a cracked pot, pummels us into clay once again and recreates us with a new integrity. Our past brokenness isn't made into faithfulness. It's erased by God's faithfulness. When the author of the aforementioned blog post suggests that God turns our sacrifices into acceptable sacrifices, that obscures the central Christian claim that only the self-sacrifice of Jesus justifies us. Our actions may reflect that sacrifice, and insofar as they do, they're worthy reflections of God's love. As Christians live lives that display the selflessness of God before others, they point to the paradigmatic selflessness of Christ. That, then, is how a pacifist like myself celebrates Memorial Day. I don't celebrate the wars. I don't agree with the decisions to risk the lives of these women and men by governments with suspect motives and precious little experience on the battlefield, especially when those lives are of my family members, my loved ones. Neither do I look to God to turn the sacrifices of soldiers into acceptable gifts. Instead, I lament the loss of life as I look to the selflessness of soldiers who, within a broken system, embodied a selflessness that ended in death on behalf of their sisters and brothers that reflects the sacrifice of Christ. I don't agree with the violence of war or the decisions that send these people to battle. Instead, in their courage and loyalty, in their willingness to die so that others might live, I respect how they, perhaps better than anyone else on this earth, know what it is like to pray alongside Jesus: Father, take this cup from me. Yet, not my will, but yours be done. That's how I'm able to post the picture above, with the graves of soldiers as background to the words of Jesus. In the willingness of my family members and of many soldiers across the world to risk their lives for their friends, whether friends back home or friends at their side, they tap into something like the love that Jesus spoke of in John 15. They put on display, however imperfectly, the kind of perfect love that Christ has for us all. God will raise them up on the last day not because their sacrifice was appropriate - for, let's be clear, none of our sacrifices before God are good enough to warrant abundant life - but because Jesus's transformative grace extends to us all. Through their willingness to give up their lives, they point to the sacrifice that does earn us eternal life: God's willingness to die so that we might all live. While we must never forget that Jesus' sacrifice was one that didn't entail violent retribution to his enemies, that does not mean soldiers don't risk laying down their lives. They do, and that's why this pacifist pastor commemorates Memorial Day. why I support #decolonizeLutheranism (and why you should pay more attention to people other than me)5/24/2016 If you don't know what #decolonizeLutheranism is, the first thing to do is head over to their website and check out their beliefs section, at the very least. Even better would be to read a few of the listed articles to get a sense of how the leaders want to reach the goals they've laid out.
That's a necessary prerequisite for the conversation because part of colonization's fallout is that white, male voices are typically given more privilege than the voices of women and the voices of people of color (POC). I'm an advocate for #decolonizeLutheranism, but I'm not a leader. I'm following the lead of those whose opportunities to lead have been inhibited by the legacy of colonization. That's the first lesson in why I support #decolonizeLutheranism: We need the leadership perspectives of all sorts of people in the Body of Christ, not just white dudes. If there's neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, then we need to stop affording places of privilege primarily (if not solely) to people from typical places of power. Of course, you might suggest that part of this is due to Lutheranism's origins in Germany. You're right! However, the cultural origins of a particular movement doesn't mean that it should remain captive to that culture. Western Lutheranism often views our denomination as one with a primarily white, European cultural location. Yet, there are as many Lutherans in Africa, Asia, and Latin America as there are in Europe and North America. Further, the faith is growing in the Global South as it shrinks in the Western world. The cultural importance of Lutheranism now far exceeds its Northern European origins. We need #deconolizeLutheranism because millions of the world's Lutherans would consider Namibia the center of Lutheran power, not Germany, nor Minnesota. Reasons to support don't end there, though. In fact, the movement's Lutheran character is just downright, well, right! The focus begins with justification - Luther wrote just a bit about that - and the focus that, before God, we're all equally justified. The movement recognizes the story of Lutheranism began with Martin Luther but has been shared, amended, and lived out in myriad ways that reveal a rich tapestry of faith that simply can't be contained by a single cultural location. Perhaps the most strikingly beautiful commitment is that #decolonizeLutheranism supports an evangelistic fervor, believing that the story of Jesus still needs to be told! In their words, they're working on "rapturously reclaiming the apostolic mantle from the clutches of White European dominance, [so that] we may then return to the world with the same zeal as the Apostles." Rather than see colonization's sordid use of missionary's as a reason to avoid evangelism, #decolonizeLutheranism sees a deep value in our call as witnesses to the story of Jesus Christ, not as a disembodied tale secluded to a text written thousands of years ago, but as an incarnational narrative of a life God revealed first in Jesus and now lives through each of us in our varied cultural positions. As we witness, we witness to a Jesus comes to our tables and doesn't just eat lutefisk, but also chows on pozole, matzah, chakalakah, and bibingka. We witness to a Jesus who doesn't just speak German, but the native tongues of all our peoples. We witness to a Jesus who might look nothing like us and yet came to love us just the same. The Gospel story shouldn't be ruined by cultural appropriation, but instead frees us to see how God remains active across all nations, redeeming all of creation. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the heart of #decolonizeLutheranism isn't to supplant the assumption of one dominant culture with the assumption of another dominant culture. The leaders come from varying cultural backgrounds, varying racial makeups, and varying histories in the ELCA. This isn't about making a Black Lutheranism, or a Latino Lutheranism, or a LGBTQ+ Lutheranism, because there's already many Lutherans who are African American, African, Latino, Hispanic, LGTBQ+, as well as Filipino and Indian and Native American and all sorts of other varying national, ethnic, sexual, and gender identities. The beauty I see in #decolonizeLutheranism is the desire to lift up the various ways that our shared faith is lived out in unique ways across our nation, across our world, and across our church. That's a cause worth supporting because these people, our friends in Jesus, our siblings in Christ, are worth supporting. At a conference a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet Shawn Lovejoy, a pastor who now serves as a consultant and coach for other pastors. Even as we come from quite different church backgrounds, or perhaps because of that fact, I found Shawn's personality and acute sense of purpose compelling. It may also have been the catchy title of his book: Be Mean About the Vision.
Like any good marketer, the title is meant to catch your eye and make you read rather than inspire cruel behavior around the vision of your ministry. Instead, Shawn draws on a more ancient meaning of the word mean, namely, intent. Be intentional about the vision. Mean what you say, and defend it. Be clear about what vision God has placed on your community and don't allow distractions to detract from that purpose. At Christ Lutheran Church, our mission is to be a fellowship living and sharing the love of God through worship, service, wellness, and hospitality. We discerned this vision together over a year ago, doing the hard work of drafting and editing, of discerning and developing, until we finally felt God lead us to this place of mission. We voted unanimously to accept. We had it! Then, we let it sit untouched for almost a year. Oops. That's not entirely true. We began to organize our committee reports around that mission. As a council, we made decisions about new activities based in whether they fit that mission. Yet, we didn't focus upon it. Shawn's teaching, and now his book, have convinced me that needs to change. I want to be mean, to be intentional and clear, about the vision because God gifted us with a passion to be together as an intentional fellowship, a passion to not just live God's love, but to share it with others through our gifts of worship, service, wellness, and hospitality. For us, this means that we're taking a few steps to make this vision more prominent in our life together as a congregation. + First, I've begun a preaching series on the core aspects so that it receives the pride of place from the pulpit. + Along with that, we've begun saying the mission statement together during worship so that we internalize it. + We're also putting it more prominently in our materials, including websites, bulletins, letterheads, and business cards so that it becomes clear to others that this is the core of our ministry. + We're doubling down on this as a plumb line for ministry, so that all that we do together as a congregation expresses this core identity. This means that we intentionally let go of all other things, even good things, because God doesn't call us to everything, but to certain thing at certain times for certain people. Now, not everyone needs to focus on their mission in these particular ways, but I'm increasingly aware of the power of this defined core of who God calls us to be. For instance, many of my colleagues find resistance to preaching and teaching inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community, but because service and hospitality stand clear as part of God's mission in this place, we're blessed with a number of LGBTQ+ members and friends. Others find race to be a difficult topic in their context, and while there isn't universal agreement among us about how to address issues of race, privilege, and power, we're able to talk about them openly because of a deep commitment to be a true fellowship and to have fellowship with people not like us, who bring different gifts and share different parts of God's image with us. This clarity of vision doesn't necessarily make these things easy, but it allows us to have these conversations in meaningful ways that promote active change in our lives as well. For instance, the South Carolina Synod of the ELCA has been hosting viewings of the movie Selma across the state. These events, led by African American people, introduce conversation and holy listening into congregations that opens up honesty and authenticity around issues of race. We at Christ Lutheran, as a part of our commitment to service and wellness, have developed a Faith and Film event that shows popular films (recent titles include Big Hero 6 and Mr. Holmes) and connects their themes to our beliefs and practices as people of faith. Our desire is to use the Faith and Film platform to coordinate an event, similar to those hosted by the South Carolina Synod, that includes a viewing of Selma and conversation led by our African American ministry partners here in Radford. Our hope to do this comes from a growing sense that our mission doesn't just allow us to seek active opportunities for reconciliation, but requires us to do so. This is already happening here because we've got a small sense that this mission is meaningful to our lives here as God's people at Christ Lutheran Church. As we continue to focus on and grow in this mission, we see a chance for these opportunities for meaningful, inclusive ministries to multiply. Shawn reminded me of what was already happening in my own congregation: when the vision catches hold, it bears wonderful fruit. Being mean about the vision can help our congregation to grow not just in knowledge of our mission, but in truly activating that Gospel-centered identity within our entire community. In the Lutheran world, Nadia Bolz-Weber's reached a sort of demi-iconic status. The combination of a tattooed Cross Fit physique, a shockingly engaging public persona, an unapolgetic social liberalism and a devout Lutheran identity enters the perfect storm of post-modern religious searches in the 21st century such that she's now known to millions of people as Nadia. Say that name in an ELCA context and you'll likely hear a hundred opinions, most of which represent a constant groundswell of support.
Reading her most recent book, Accidental Saints, was a powerful experience for many of my friends. This is built for all people of faith, not just pastors. This is true of her reflections on worship life and sermons as well, though as I pastor I'm sure they speak to me in different ways than they speak to others. No better, no worse, just different perspectives on the wisdom Nadia shares. With her star continuing to shine in the Lutheran world, there's a temptation for congregants and pastors alike to want pastoral leadership to look more like Nadia. No one wants this less than Nadia, I imagine. You can find many of her sermons for her congregation, House for All Sinners and Saints, here. We're not called to be Nadia, or C.F.W. Walther, or Richard Lischer, or Elizabeth Eaton, or Will Herzfeld. This Lutheran legends of varied backgrounds were best when they faithfully embodied the Gospel through their God-given identities as the particular reflections of God. What we can learn from Nadia, and from all these other saints in the tradition, is how to become more fully alive as people created in God's image. How shouldn't we preach like Nadia? We shouldn't try to be Nadia. We shouldn't cuss just because some people think it's cool that she uses expletives. She's in a particular place and a particular culture that appreciates that language, and many of us are in very different places. The same goes for dressing like her, or getting tattoos like her. God didn't call us to be Nadia, but called us to be pastors. Nadia is good at that in large part because she's authentically herself in joy and tears and success and scars. How should we preach like Nadia? We should struggle with the weighty responsibility that we have to share the Gospel. Last week the Revised Common Lectionary brought me one of my favorite images in all the Bible: the forever opened gates of the heavenly city in Revelation 21 & 22. What I've found, though, is that I love this so much that I'm just not quite sure what to say about it. Over and again, Nadia reveals how a holy tension exists in the giving of a sermon, where any confidence that we might have doesn't come from us, or our perceived coolness, but instead the life, gifts, and wisdom give to us by God. That's not an excuse for poor or incomplete sermon preparation, but an encouragement to dive in even deeper. To edit and reedit. To research outside typical sources. To seek the leading of God's Spirit. This takes time, and energy, and sometimes tears. We should prepare and preach like this. Perhaps more to the point, we should bring all of ourselves into the sermon process, not as an act of ego, but instead as a commitment to the incarnational reality of preaching. God encounters our people through the sermons we preach, so we ought to simultaneously be fully ourselves and pointing to God's work through us. In this way, through both our successes and our scars, congregations can see God actively at work through not just what is preached, but through the preacher as well. So, yes, learn from other excellent preachers, but do so in a way that makes your sermons more authentically yours and in ways that more vibrantly point to Christ. That's how we best follow the lead of good preachers and best serve the needs of the congregations that call us to preach. This image came across social media today. It hit a chord with me, so I shared it as well. Even more than the quote, though, what struck me was the responses it received. Multiple people shared that they needed this encouragement, that they ought to make this their mantra.
Worry holds us all hostage at times. Worry plagues us with potentials fit only for horror films. Worry handcuffs us to the worst of all possible outcomes even though those tragedies will likely never see the light of day. Worry's not productive, except that it produces more of itself. Worry just inspires more worry. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy of despair. So why do we give in to it so often? Our overactive imaginations can serve such greater purposes than worry. The church needs our imaginations. The world needs our imaginations. Our neighbors need our imaginations. Jesus tells us not to worry, for today's responsibilities need our attention. Think about it this way. We're so often dumbfounded by the needs that face the world and seem to have no idea how to creatively engage the problems in ways that might be productive. Solutions seem to escape us at every turn. Yet, somehow we imagine unfathomably improbable ways that our lives might fall apart. Our imaginations, that creative part of us that might serve to solve the problems that face our world, instead dwells on ways that things fall apart. I recently watched the movie Tomorrowland. While the film wasn't a universal success (50% from critics and audiences alike on Rotten Tomatoes), the premise kept me enthralled throughout. If the best of us, the dreamers from every walk of life, focus on the good, then our future is not just bright, it's fantastic. However, if we presume death and destruction, then that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that doesn't just occupy our minds,but our vocations, our creativity, our innovation, everything that should produce good instead spirals toward death. In other words, worry is a misuse of imagination. In Christian parlance, if we're focused on hell rather than heaven, if we're bent upon destruction rather than God's coming kingdom, then we've not only missed the point, but we've also distorted our God-given creative gifts and turned them toward death rather than life. Of course, we can't help our reactions to bad news, but we can direct our time, energy, and focus. Do we focus on the worry, or the solution, to the problem that we're facing? Be creative, friends. Be imaginative. Don't let worry cloud your hope, but instead, give yourself permission to innovate toward life. That sounds a lot like resurrection to me. I've had every intent to blog over the past month, but as happens to all of us, I found myself overwhelmed by other responsibilities.
This led to what I'm calling an accidental Sabbath from writing. The month that passed gave me some time to reflect on writing in this fashion. What's the purpose of this blog? What do I hope to accomplish? Who do I hope to reach? A sense is growing within myself that this blog serves as a place for me to communicate with others, not as a leader, but as a peer. I've things to share, as do others in the church. This blog serves as a piece of conversation with others in the Body of Christ. I don't hope to develop a "following," but instead to contribute to a conversation amongst others committed to the spread of God's goodness in the world. To that end, I'm planning to change format a bit. My plan is to intentionally engage people and pieces that appear across the internet. Some, like my first posting in this new season, will engage memes and other digital art. Other times I'll introduce articles or blogs that caught my attention. I also plan to engage the work of friends who serve God through their various vocations in the world. I guess what I mean to say is, at it's best, this blog has always been about more than just me. The most interesting content doesn't stand alone, doesn't flash into being within a vacuum, but exists within a greater chorus of voices. The more I focus on others, the better this will be for me as a writer and for those of you who've chosen to read. I also hope this inspires you to write as well, whether just a Facebook comment or tweet in reply or through your now blogs and posts. The best would be more personal conversation, so feel free to reach out to me at dukelutheran@gmail.com. As we talked about today in our community, we're at our best as a church when we live life together. Whether that stays located in the digital realm or we meet in person one day, this is true for all of us. We're at our best when we do life together, living not just for ourselves but for the best of others. Here's to hoping this is part of a conversation that points to the abundant life we see in and receive from Jesus. |
AuthorSimultaneously a sinner and a saint. Archives
September 2020
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