There seem to be many
competing images of God in the world today; a loving father, a benevolent
master, a strict tyrant, a demanding ideologue, holy perfection and many, many more. Ultimately,
our image of God is reflected in our own life. We see it in our expectations,
in the way we treat others and in the way we think about ourselves. Changing
the way we understand God can change almost everything about life.
At the end of July I
developed two of my previous posts on lamenting (Lament and
The
Lost Art of Lament) into a sermon. As part of the sermon I invited people
to write down their laments on a piece of paper that was photocopied to look
like a brick. The staff at church and I assembled the bricks into a “wailing
wall” that is displayed at the entrance to our worship space.
I sat down at my desk the following Tuesday and began reading
through all the laments that were emptied out onto the paper bricks in worship
on that Sunday morning. There were laments about the state of our nation and
the political process. There were laments about the civility of our society,
random violence and even specific examples taken from the news. There were
laments about the aging process, health concerns, illness, broken
relationships, and personal failures. And of course, there were laments about
the death.
When I finished reading the laments I sat quietly for a time
marveling at the resiliency of the human spirit.
At first I was
hesitant to believe that this voice I heard in my head was the actually God
speaking to me. I’m still not one-hundred percent certain about it. At the
time, there was only one way to find out if it was or if it wasn’t God speaking
to me. So I started to listen.
There are places and
times when we feel a deeper connection to all of life; past, present and
future. I was once told that the Irish call them “thin places.” Births, deaths
and ritualized transitions like weddings and baptisms often bring us to those
thin places where we experience pain, wonder, hope and joy all at the same
time. As a pastor I have had the privilege to be present when families invite
me to be with them in these sacred moments.
The first memorial service I ever did for someone was at the
request of the deceased’s girlfriend. When I sat down with her to talk about
the service I learned that her boyfriend died in a car accident while running
from the police because he was on parole and there were drugs in the car. He
was on parole after serving time for setting a local church on fire to hide a
robbery. When I finished the service I thought that was the strangest funeral I
could ever imagine.
Not even close.
The next one was for an elderly man whose grown daughter had
Down’s Syndrome. Her brother had wrapped their dad’s ashes in a gift box so as
not to upset his sister. Instead, she thought the present was for her birthday
and she spent most of the service begging to open it and throwing a fit when
her brother wouldn’t let her.
Another time I was asked by one of three sons to preside at
his dad’s funeral. About half-way through the service, at the conclusion of the
sermon, the eldest brother stood up and said, “Dad didn’t believe in this
bullshit but he loved his beer. We’re takin’ this celebration down to the bar.”
And they did.
At another funeral the cement vault wouldn’t go all the way
into the grave. The funeral directors and I spent 15 minutes jumping up and
down on the vault to get it to settle below the surface after the family had
gone back to the church for lunch.
And it would have been nice if someone had told me that when a
person dies it doesn’t always happen like it does on TV and in the movies.
Involuntary muscle contractions sometimes cause the lungs to gasp for air for
up to two minutes after death. Nobody wants to hear the grown man in the
clerical collar scream like a little girl in the peaceful and solemn moments
after grandma passes away.
I’ve presided at weddings where the rings were left in another
room and more at more than one where the Unity Candle wouldn’t light or ring
bearers and flower girls refused to walk into the church. At one wedding, the
bride looked at me during the vows and I thought she was going to run. At an outdoor
ceremony the Unity Sand was missing so the bride’s aunt walked to the parking
lot to retrieve it and then tried to sneak it into place behind me during the
service while everyone watched what she was doing instead of paying attention
to the couple as they said their vows.
I have seen grandparents act like paparazzi, standing in front
of the congregation with cameras flashing to capture the exact moment when a
grandchild is baptized. I’ve seen parents of baptized infants stand like stone
statues while an older child distracts everyone, exploring the front of the
church.
You might think that these are not sacred thin places but they
are. We long for moments when we experience the eternal. But even when things
go exactly as planned we still bring our humanity with us into those moments.
Sometimes our fear and insecurity cause us to balk in the presence of the
eternal. Sometimes our excitement and joy can’t be contained. But most of the
time it’s simply because we are human and we have no choice but to bring our humanity
into these thin places.
The fact that our human foibles can’t ruin these thin places
makes me think that perhaps there are way more of them than we realize. Maybe
we encounter thin places every day and we just miss them because we are too
caught up in the drama of the world around us.
What thin places have you experienced? Will you run into one today?
This week I’ve been writing about the tension between forging
ahead with life and waiting for the right time and the right set of
circumstances before moving forward. The impetus for this has been a
spiritually torturous span of time where I have been trying to discern what the
next chapter of my life will be. It’s not that I have to know all the details
beforehand, it’s just that I want to be sure that I’m headed in the right
direction.
To be honest, I’m not sure where I get the sense that there is
one, right direction or why I want to be so sure that I am heading that way. If
life is a gift to explore and enjoy then there really is no one way in which to
do that. The fact that everyone experiences life differently is a testament to the
idea that there is no one, right way. So why I am so concerned that I should
know the right direction before I move?
One reason is that I am pretty sure that there are some wrong ways
to explore and enjoy life. I want to avoid those ways because they tend to cause
me pain and anxiety. I know that it’s not always possible to avoid these things
and that wisdom and understanding often come from times of suffering. I also
know that trying to avoid suffering often leads to more of it for myself or for
others. Yet I go to great lengths to keep suffering at arm’s length from me and escape from it when I can't.
Yesterday, as I wrestled with these thoughts for the umpteenth
time I was happily distracted by the news that my favorite band released a new single
in preparation for the release of a new album in June. I watched the video and
found myself connecting to it immediately which I don't usually do with their songs. The song played right into my
thoughts about the way we go through life and learn from our joys and sorrows.
It laments and celebrates the fullness of life. I have to share it.
Headlong Flight
by Rush
All the journeys of this great adventure
It didn’t always feel that way
I wouldn’t trade them because I made them
The best I could and that’s enough to say
Some days were dark
I wish that I could live it all again
Some nights were bright
I wish that I could live it all again
All the highlights of that headlong flight
Holding on with all my might
To what I felt back then
I wish that I could live it all again
I have stroked the fire of the big steel wheels
Steered the airship right across the stars
I learned to fight
I learned to love
and learned to feel
Oh I wish that I could live it all again.
All the treasures, the gold and glory
It didn’t always feel that way
I don’t regret it
I’ll never forget it
I wouldn’t trade tomorrow for today
Some days were dark
I wish that I could live it all again
Some nights were bright
I wish that I could live it all again
I have stroked the fire of the big steel wheels
Steered the airship right across the stars
I learned to fight
I learned to love
and learned to steal
Oh I wish that I could live it all again.
The song is even more poignant when you realize that the man
who wrote these words, Neil Peart, lost his 19 year-old daughter in a car
accident and then, ten months later, lost his wife to cancer. To be able to
write that you would live it all again is an incredible testimony to the power
of life.
There is an African proverb that says that we back into the
future. Perhaps by looking at where I’ve been I can more easily see where I am
going. By exploring the paths that have brought me to the place in life that I
inhabit now, maybe I can make sense of where I am and where I am going.
You’re welcome to come along if you like. Whether you do or don’t
consider this video by one of the world’s greatest bands as my gift to you. (And
if you want to contribute to a fund that will help me see them in concert in
the fall, I will consider that your gift to me.)
In my third through eighth grade years my family lived on a 40
acre farm in Michigan. We raised some chickens, occasionally some ducks and a
pile of barn cats. My mom insisted on having a garden in which to torture her
sons with the spirit-breaking task of pulling weeds 45 minutes a few days each
summer while paying five cents for each ice cream bucket that we filled. That
was the extent of our farming. Two fields were rented out to a neighbor who
planted corn in them and there were two fields that had been hay fields for the
previous owner. Since we didn’t raise livestock we let the grass grow tall in
those fields.
We called these two unfenced hay fields of tall grass “the
weeds” to distinguish them from the areas of cut grass around the house that we
called the lawn. My brothers and I spent hours playing in the weeds every
summer. There were no trails so we would blaze our own, carrying our bare arms
at shoulder height so they wouldn’t be cut by the slicing blades of grass.
Sometimes we would turn around and follow our new trail back out and sometimes
we would make a new trail through to the other side of the field.
Standing on the edge of the field I could see where we had
been. I don’t remember any of the trails ever being straight. Each one
meandered and twisted through the tall grass. Sometimes they went around
patches of nettles or around a rock but most of the time the crooked path was
simply due to the fact that something inside us told us to step over this way
or follow the slope of the land that way. Or, more likely, there was nothing
inside of us that insisted that we travel a straight line.
As a kid it would have
made no sense to stand at the edge of the field and wait for a path to appear
so that I knew where to go. I knew that playing in the field was fun and a
large part of the fun was creating our own trails. We learned painful and
irritating lessons about nettles and cockleburs by walking through them. We
would be startled and excited by a noisy pheasant taking flight being flushed
from its hiding place in the weeds. We would avoid the corner of the field where
we could smell that a skunk den had been built. We were scared out of the field
for days when a ground hog bull rushed its way past us low in the grass.
Had we stood on the side of the field waiting for a path to
appear we would have missed all of this.
That’s the problem with waiting for God to reveal each new
step in our lives. It completely ignores the fact that we learn through our
experiences. It actually disengages us from the fullness of life that is given
to us as a gift. But the biggest problem is that it immobilizes us with fear.
When we wait to be absolutely sure of God’s next step for us we become anxious
that we will miss it. We hesitate, afraid that it is too soon to move. We fret
that we may have missed our opportunity and now it is too late.
The Plan
For I know the plans I
have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you,
plans to give you hope and a future.
-Jeremiah 29:11
I believe that God does have a plan for us. However, it is not as specific as we sometimes wish that it would be. Instead, what if God’s plan for us is to set us free from fear (fear of
harm, destruction, death etc…) so that we can live in the fullness of this
life? What if God’s deepest desire isn’t to create a world full of obedient
people but is to see the gift of this life experienced in all of its glory and
tragedy? What if the point is to be blazing trails through the field of life
instead of standing where we are in hopes that a straight and narrow trail with
fences on both sides appears to lead us to the other side?
So then, if we are truly engaged and are blazing trails
through this field of life, what does it mean to “wait upon the Lord?” What
exactly are we waiting for?
This is the seventh post in a series about ways that I have
missed the mark as a pastor. It is a response to several articles about why
young adults are leaving the church. You can begin here
if you want some background to this current article.
I’m sorry that I engage so much of what is happening in our
culture and our world on a doctrinal level and not as a matter of faith that is
sometimes messy and unsure.
My faith lives in my head.
This is one of the main criticisms of the mainline Church in
America and Lutherans are champions of this kind of faith. It’s why we are so
good at theology. We think about
faith. This was the faith in which I was raised and, as one of my favorite
songwriters penned it, “you can only grow the way the wind blows.”
But it’s also where I find I am most engaged with God. I love
to meditate and reflect on what I see God doing in the world. I can spend hours
trying to sort out the relationships that we humans have with both creation and
the creator. I find peace while listening for the Divine to speak in a variety
of ways (except when I experience frustration at hearing nothing or hearing
something that I don’t want to hear). I find joy whenever a new insight inches
me closer to understanding what this life is all about.
To be honest, though, I like living out my faith in my head
because it’s safe. It’s like sharing your faith in a sermon. Many people think
that preaching in front of a large group is difficult but, once you get over
the fear of public speaking, you soon find that sharing what you are thinking
in a place where people aren’t (usually) welcome to respond, refute or rebuff
can make a person pretty bold. (If you haven’t already, see my post from a
couple days ago From
Authority to Resource to get an idea of the kind of authority that is
granted in preaching.)
I also like to let my faith live in my head because it is
always a bit neater and more tidy than in the world of emotions. I can sort
things out and categorize them. I can rationalize and reason. I can remove
myself from the roller-coaster ride that emotions take us through. Again, it’s
all about finding a safe place. So when someone comes to me with the raw
emotion of life’s messy issues overflowing around them, retreating to the safe
confines of religious doctrine is my first response for all these reasons.
The thing that I am being forced to learn is that faith doesn’t
lead to a safe place. That’s where we want to end up: In a place of safety and comfort.
But faith (and life) leads us to places of risk. As one conference presenter
put it, the major stories of the Bible are all about leaving home, over and
over again. Life is a constant leaving of the places where we have become
comfortable in order to risk and grow, not just for ourselves but to help
others grow as well.
I am constantly learning and relearning the importance of
staying in the moment no matter how thrilling or anxiety-producing it is. I am
a firm believer in a ministry of presence; just being there with people in
their sufferings and joys. But it is never my default mode of ministry (or
existence). I have to catch myself as I turn to doctrine to tidy up a messy
situation and be mindful to just sit within the pain, the tension and even the
delight. That doesn’t mean I can’t reflect upon it later or that I can’t help
someone else reflect on it when they are ready. It just means that sometimes I
have to experience life before I try to make sense out of it.
