Perceptions from a Pewboy

Would you describe yourself as patriotic?

The word “patriot” is a derivative of a Greek word that essentially means “of one’s fathers” (as in “forefathers”). In a more general sense, the Greek word from which we derive the word “patriotic” means “relating closely to those of one’s country.”

Based upon this foundational etymology, I feel very comfortable describing myself as “patriotic.” Even as I type these words, for example, I am cognizant of my profound gratitude for my forefathers and foremothers who sacrificed much—some their very lives—to create a land of liberty and hope. I am even more grateful that, in those seasons of moral blindness and failure, when America accommodated incomprehensible evils such as slavery, slaughter, and civil war, the nobler impulses at the heart of our nation’s identity inspired new and, at times, countercultural patriots to stand against accepted atrocities until others began to recognize the truth of their prophecy.

One of my dearest friends (who happens to be a soldier) has experienced several lengthy deployments in recent years. When I look into his eyes (and the eyes of his family), I am instantaneously reminded of the fact that patriots are alive and well. My friend, and thousands like him, are willingly placing themselves in harm’s way all around the world, laboring sacrificially for the freedom and integrity that America, at its best, dares to champion.

I am free to write these paragraphs on my own personal blog only because of those past patriots who have gone before me and those current patriots who protect me. I feel inseparably connected to their character and am ever grateful for their bravery. In short, their spirit of patriotism inspires me to love my country, its ideals, and its nobler principles.

I hope that what I have just written will help you to understand with greater sensitivity what I’m about to write.

As much as I love my country and as deeply as I respect its flag, I am frequently concerned about the church’s willingness (and perhaps even eagerness) to generate what I perceive to be a dangerous fusion of patriotism and discipleship. In the American church’s zeal to create what might be described as a nationalistic spirituality—a spirituality in which one can carry a cross in one arm and an American flag in the other—we have produced a “theology of the state” in which discipleship to Jesus Christ is inappropriately measured by the degree to which it produces good Americans (good citizens).

I am not suggesting, of course, that good discipleship and good citizenship are mutually exclusive. After all, history has proven time and time again that cross-carrying has a way of producing humble and selfless people (which has been crucial in the development of America’s moral center). My concern, however, is that Jesus never called people to a governmentally-defined citizenship. Nor did he establish the church as a bastion of nationalism. Rather, Jesus called (and calls) us into a new Kingdom—one that doesn’t negate our national identity but transcends it, thereby helping us to live in a transformed relationship with both nation and world.

Put simply, in the Kingdom inaugurated by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the water of baptism is thicker even than the blood of the patriots. In that regard, our covenant relationship with the Christ-follower in Iraq is more defining for us than our connection with the American agnostic who is living right next door.

This Sunday, many churches will not think very deeply about the complexity and the importance of these realities. All across the land, American flags will be an eagerly-accepted portion of Sunday’s liturgical environment, as will be the pledge of allegiance and, in some cases, the national anthem. Am I suggesting that this is somehow unforgivable or unredeemable? Of course not. I do pray, however, that, during its 4th of July services, the Church does not lose sight of the fact that Trinitarian worship always bears witness to the Way of Christ—a Way that cannot be linked to any one nation’s interests nor contained by any one nation’s boundaries.

Back in the early 1990’s, I served a church in North Carolina that was 9 miles north of Fort Bragg. The congregation there was replete with current and former soldiers. The spirit of patriotism in that place was understandably strong, as was evidenced by the large American flag that was prominently located just inches from the altar.

One day, a faithful member of that church came to see me in the sanctuary. She was the well-educated, fifty-four-year-old wife of a career military man, and she was every bit as patriotic as her husband was. That day in the sanctuary, she was troubled about something.

After some pleasant conversation, she arrived at the heart of the matter. “I want to tell you something,” she said to me, “and I don’t want you to judge me for saying it.”

“O.K.,” I responded. “I promise that I won’t judge you.”

“Well,” she said, “it really troubles me to have THAT in our sanctuary.” She pointed to the altar space.

“Do you mean the altar,” I asked.

“No,” she said, “not the altar. The flag. I want you to know that, every Sunday, it bothers me to have the American flag so close to our altar.”

I had never encountered this sentiment before. I was momentarily dumbfounded and speechless.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I love my country and its flag. I really do. My husband has spent his entire life in the military because he loves this country so deeply and I’m proud of him for doing that. In fact, I can’t sing a single verse of ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee’ without weeping.”

“O.K.,” I said, “so what’s the problem with the flag?”

“Well,” she said, “my husband and I have lived all over the world because of his military service. That means that I have friends all over the world. My two very best friends are from Germany and Italy. They come to visit me every year.”

I still wasn’t getting the point.

“When they come to visit me,” she continued, “I want them to come to church with me, since both of them are faithful Christians.”

All that I could think to do in the moment was to affirm her desire to invite people to church!

“Don’t you get it,” she said to me. “When I bring my German and Italian friends to this church, I want them to see the cross and the pulpit and the Bible and the stained-glass windows. But I don’t want them to see the American flag and the altar right next to one another.”

“Why would that be such a problem,” I asked.

“Because,” she said, “by putting them right next to one another, we change the meaning of both the cross and the flag. The flag can help us to remember our national identity, which is really important to me. But the cross is bigger than that. The cross is about salvation. It’s about eternal life. It’s about the whole world.”

She paused to reflect upon what she had just said.

“I guess it’s like this,” she continued. “When my foreign Christian friends walk into my church’s sanctuary, I don’t want them to feel like foreigners any more. I want them to feel like they’ve come to a home away from home. I want them to know that they are part of us.”

That conversation, which made its way into the journal that I kept at the time, initiated a struggle within me that continues even to this day. It is a struggle to discern the nature of patriotism, the nature of discipleship, the difference between the two, and the dangers of synthesizing them too quickly. I don’t want it to be a struggle that alienates those of you who might disagree with me on this issue. But I do want it to be a redemptive struggle—one that compels me to think more clearly about everything from nationalism to liturgical imagery.

At any rate, that conversation from the early 1990’s is part of the reason why my favorite patriotic hymn is “This Is My Song.” It is a hymn that enables me to be patriotic enough to acknowledge that “this is my home, the country where my heart is; here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine.”

At the same time, the hymn helps me to guard against nationalistic idolatry by forcing me to remember that “other hearts in other lands are beating with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.”

May God bless America where it warrants a divine blessing. May God bless all the world’s nations in the same fashion. And may God bless the Church around the world as it continues to bear witness to the Kingdom in which our defining citizenship is to be found.

In the New Testament book of James, after the author highlights the unholy behavior of mistreating the disenfranchised and ignoring the poor, he offers a teaching that is as timeless as it is revelatory: “What good is it,” he writes, “if you say that you have faith, but do not have works?” (James 2:14)

What does Scripture mean by “works?” I have always believed it to be a reference to those tangible works of ministry that bear witness to the kingdom that God inaugurated in Christ. Works of compassion and justice. Works emerging from a heart that has been transformed and reoriented by the love of Jesus Christ. “What good is it,” the biblical author writes, “if you say that you have faith but do not have works? If a brother or a sister is in trouble and lacks daily food, and you say to them, ‘God bless,’ but do not do anything to supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?”

Then the biblical author encapsulates the urgency of his teaching in a powerfully unsettling way: “So,” he writes, “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (James 2:17)

I invite you to allow yourself to be unsettled and perhaps even undone by that biblical teaching for a moment. Allow the teaching to make its way into every chamber of your soul. “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is not a saving faith. It is a dead faith.”

Over the centuries of Christian theology, Christian thinkers have perpetuated what I consider to be a misguided and unfortunate debate. The debate is normally referred to as the “faith versus works debate,” and it hinges on this theological question: Are we saved by faith or are we saved by our good works? People on both sides of the debate cite particular scriptures to support their arguments. The people who believe that we are saved by faith alone (in Latin, “sola fide”) are quick to cite scriptures like Ephesians 2:8-9, which reads this way: “By grace we have been saved through faith, and this is not our own doing, but the gift of God, not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” That’s a pretty clear teaching, right?

But hold on. Because, on the other side of the debate are the people who maintain that salvation is received—not EARNED, mind you—but RECEIVED through the doing of good and compassionate works. They cite scriptures like Matthew 25:31-46, in which Jesus makes clear that, in the final judgment, our eternal reward or our eternal punishment has much to do with whether or not we have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, cared for the sick, and visited the prisoner. In Matthew 25, Jesus tells us that our good works are indeed an integral portion of the salvation that God has made possible.

For centuries, the theological debate has raged on, spawning hugely unfortunate extremes and unnecessary distortions of biblical truth. But in the book of James, it is made crystal clear to us that debating over faith and works is something like debating over bloodflow and breathing. Which would you rather do without, the flow of blood through your veins or the intake of oxygen? That would be a ridiculous conversation, since life depends upon both of these processes.

In much the same way, salvation depends, according to Scripture, upon both faith and good works. They are both manifestations of God’s saving grace, and they are both inseparably joined in the life of discipleship. Faith, without works, is dead. Good works, without faith, are random and unsubstantiated.

But allow me to be very clear about this: I am not suggesting that we have the wherewithal to EARN our salvation through either our faith or our works. We have neither the rectitude nor the righteousness to accomplish that. Salvation is God’s accomplishment and God’s gift, offered to us in grace. We cannot earn it, nor can we ever achieve it by our own merit. We can, however, RECEIVE God’s gift of salvation. (I don’t think that I have to say much to remind you that there is a vast difference between earning a prize and receiving a gift.)

The God-given, Spirit-empowered mechanism by which we RECEIVE God’s gift of salvation is the two-tiered mechanism of faith and works: faith in Jesus Christ accompanied by the good works that the love of Christ inspires within us.

The Greek word for faith that is utilized in the second chapter of James is a word that implies significantly more than an intellectual agreement or a cognitive speculation. In fact, the Greek word for faith is one that implies trust, reliance, dependable relationship. The kind of saving faith that Scripture describes, in other words, is a life-changing relationship with the living and ever-dynamic Christ—a relationship that changes us inwardly to such an extent that it becomes the joy of our life to bless others with works of mercy, not for the purpose of inflating our ego, but for the purpose of giving expression to the glorious and relentless love of Jesus Christ. That is why Scripture is able to say with conviction that faith without works is dead. If our faith is not accompanied by consistent works of mercy and ministry, then our faith cannot be a LIVING relationship with the LIVING Christ, whose very nature is to identify with the least and the lost.

The book of James would have us to believe that a disciple is a person of faith, but not just any faith. More specifically, a disciple is a person whose faith is nothing less than a daily walk with Jesus Christ and whose life bears witness to that daily walk through the frequent rendering of good and merciful works.

“Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers…Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” (Romans 13:11-12)

One of the more important processes that every single one of us experiences every single day is this: We wake up.

It is one of the great equalizers, isn’t it? No matter one’s income, personality, age, gender, or political affiliation, one’s experience of a new day is dependent upon his or her accommodation this regular process—the process of waking up from sleep.

It should be acknowledged that all of us wake up in different ways, depending, of course, on one’s particular routine and temperament. Some people wake up to a blaring alarm clock, others to the gentle sounds of soft music. Some people wake up to an internal alarm, a mysterious mechanism within their biological network that brings them to consciousness without any external assistance whatsoever.

Some people wake up easily and quickly. As soon as their eyes open, they hop out of bed with a palpable eagerness, excited about beginning their day. “Bring me the newspaper, bring me my coffee, bring me my fruit loops, I’m ready to go.” Other people wake up slowly and rather reluctantly, pulling a distorted face out of the congealed drool that has bonded head to pillow for the last eight hours; stumbling and grumbling all the way to the bathroom; tripping over the dog on route to shutting off the alarm that is placed intentionally on the other side of the room because of the physical movement that such a placement demands.

We all have different routines, you see. But at the heart of each routine is the simple practice of waking up. All of us have to do it. In fact, you are reading this post only because, at some point today, you saw fit to wake up.

One of the key components in the process of waking up is the task of what might be described as laying aside the darkness. Darkness, after all, is an important part of sleeping. Even if it is light outside, the closing of one’s eyes in sleep produces a condition of darkness, and it is a darkness to which one grows quickly accustomed. Part of waking up is accepting the illumination that will bring us out of the darkness of sleep and into the light of an awakened condition.

But that is not always a comfortable thing, especially if it is still dark outside when the waking occurs. We turn on that light that for some reason seems ten times brighter than it normally does. We shield ourselves from it as though we are being confronted by a radioactive bombardment. Sometimes we even curse the light because it is so painful to our eyes. But we know that we must have it. We know that the light coming on is portion of waking up. Because only then can we lay aside the darkness. Only then can we be certain that we are stepping where we need to be stepping and seeing what we need to be seeing.

I bring all of these realities to mind because they are at the heart of the scripture upon which I meditated this morning (Romans 13:11-14). It is a scripture in which the Apostle Paul essentially says to the Roman church and to us, “Hey, church, wake up! Wake up, and lay aside the darkness!”

The people to whom Paul was writing in the Roman Church would not have had alarm clocks. They would not have had light switches. But they would have been confronted with the same daily process that confronts us: the process of waking up and laying aside the darkness. Therefore, the Paul’s words would have called to mind an everyday reality that would have been as familiar to the Roman Christians as it is to us.

“You know what time it is,” Paul writes in the scripture. (Interestingly, the “time” to which Paul refers here is “kairos” time, not “chronos” time. It is not measurable and chronological time that Paul is describing. Rather, it is freighted time—time pregnant with mystical urgency and messianic significance.)

“You know what time it is,” Paul writes, “it is kairos time! It is a moment in which you are to pay attention, a moment in which you are to wake from sleep.” Why? “Because,” Paul continues, “salvation is nearer to us now than when we first became believers.”

Paul’s description of the nearness of salvation here is no doubt a reference to Christ’s triumphant return, which, with every passing day, is indeed nearer to us than it was the day before. Paul’s language also calls to mind the fragility of the human condition and, more specifically, the perpetual nearness of a physical death that will one day bring us face to face with the One who saves us.

“You know what time it is. It is time to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”

In this stark and unsettling moment of Scripture, Paul utilizes the everyday reality of waking from sleep as a metaphor for an attentive and vibrant discipleship. “Do you really want to be a follower of Jesus,” Paul essentially asks in this scripture. “Do you really want to live a life that is subordinated to his Lordship? Well then, spiritually speaking, wake up! Stop living like a spiritual somnambulist—sleepwalking from worship service to worship service, church meeting to church meeting, while giving little or no attention to the transforming presence of the living Christ in our midst.”

“Wake up,” Paul writes. “Live a life of alertness and spiritual attentiveness. Sense the urgency of the moment. Respect the fleeting nature of time. Live in such a way that you are completely awake for the kingdom of God and the ministry of that kingdom in the world.”

“Wake up,” Paul writes, “and lay aside any sinful works of darkness that are engendering a condition of sluggish indifference toward the things of God, because time is short.”

I had a conversation recently with a woman who told me that, each week, before she walks into her church building for worship, she sits in her car in the parking lot for a few minutes, and she prays a prayer that goes something like this: “Lord God, take away my pettiness; take away my mean-spiritedness; take away my self-centeredness; and take away any small-mindedness that would cause me to believe that worship is more about spiritual self-gratification than it is about offering the entirety of myself to you.”

What is that woman doing when she prays that prayer each week? The scripture from Romans provides a new vocabulary with which to answer that question. Each week in her automobile, that woman is spending a few minutes laying aside her personal works of darkness that she might be awakened to the living presence of the God she is about to worship. Each week in her automobile, in other words, that woman is waking up.

A man I know recently began to volunteer at Washington City Mission. In fact, his entire family is joining him in that volunteer ministry. “We had to do it,” he said to me. “We had to get ourselves into some hands on, face to face ministry for the sake of Jesus Christ. As a family, we had become drowsy in the comfortableness of our lifestyle. We all needed to be shaken up by some kind of new ministry that would take us beyond the stifling normalcy of what our lives had become.”

What are those family members doing when they spend hours each weekend working with the homeless? Some might say that they are simply appeasing their suburban guilt. But I say something different. I say that they are laying aside their personal works of darkness that they might be awakened to the living presence of the One who is the light of the world and whose light shines with particular brightness in the faces and lives of the poor and marginalized. That family, in other words, is waking up.

I don’t know how you look upon the season of Advent. I look upon it as a season in which to wake up. Therein, I suppose, lies the significance of the mystical rhythms of the liturgical calendar. A season like Advent brings to the church’s people a unique opportunity to open their spiritual eyes and to come out of their drowsiness, so that, by the time Christmas arrives, their hearts are receptive to Jesus, the Light of the world, who comes to us afresh.

I want to be available to him this Advent. I want to lay aside in repentance whatever works of darkness are preventing him from having complete access to my life. In short, I want to wake up.

I currently serve on the Board of Discipleship in the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. To some of you, that means very little. Others of you are deeply interested in all matters that concern discipleship. It is to you that I would like to speak for a moment.

One of our tasks as a conference board of discipleship is to develop a theology of discipleship that is simultaneously biblical and distinctively Wesleyan. The goal, of course, is to develop a more holistic understanding of the nature of our church’s mission (specifically, to make DISCIPLES of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world).

In recent days, the members of the conference board have been encouraged to spend some time in prayerful discernment over the theological meaning and nature of Christian discipleship. What follows is a written report of my personal reflection in that regard. I realize that it is a bit wordy (which is a perpetual temptation for a preacher, I suppose). But my goal is to give meaningful expression to at least some of the theological convictions that emerge from the church’s understanding of biblical discipleship in the Wesleyan tradition.

I would greatly appreciate any insights and reflections that you might have, since I am treating this as a work in progress. I value your input greatly and would love to share it with the Board of Discipleship.

A Reflection on the Nature of Discipleship to Jesus Christ

What is discipleship to Jesus Christ?

1. A Recognition that Following Jesus Is a Good and Necessary Thing
“And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him.” (Matthew 4:19-20)

Discipleship begins with a recognition that following Jesus is a good and necessary thing. This recognition is inspired in various ways. For some, it is inspired by a personal awareness of sin and an equally personal need for a savior. For others, it is inspired by an intellectual conclusion concerning a theological conviction. For still others, it is inspired by an unnamable hunger to find alignment with matters of eternal significance. And yet, although the recognition comes in different ways for different people, it is always the result of God’s preveniently active gracious initiative, mysteriously and powerfully at work in human lives to draw people into the salvation and discipleship that God desires for all the world’s people.

2. A Willingness to Turn Around
[Jesus said] ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’” (Mark 1:15)

In the journey of discipleship, the recognition of the goodness and necessity of Jesus is eventually accompanied by a willingness to take human sin seriously. More specifically, a disciple recognizes that sin has produced a spiritual chasm between humankind and God that humankind, on its own, does not have the capacity to bridge. Sin is collective and cosmic. It is also deeply personal—a rebellion in which each human being participates. Therefore, discipleship requires a personal turning around (a repentance) in which one begins to turn away from sin in order to turn toward the Christ who delivers us from sin. Such repentance enables disciples to become receptive to the cleansing and transforming grace of God. It is also the instrument through which one’s fondness for sin begins to decrease in order that one’s devotion to Jesus and his Way might increase.

3. A Relationship with Jesus as Savior
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

In healthy discipleship, Jesus becomes more than a historical figure and moral example to be studied and admired. He becomes a Savior to be believed and embraced. Although the church’s doctrine concerning Jesus and the salvation that he makes possible reflects a noteworthy diversity, at the heart of these doctrines is the biblical conviction that Jesus, through his life, death, and resurrection, is a Savior sent by God to a world that desperately needs salvation. To embrace Jesus as Savior (and to be embraced by him) is to acknowledge the holy mystery that Jesus is the One who delivers us from sin, thereby enabling a reconciliation between a perfectly holy God and fallen human souls.

When one trusts in Jesus for salvation, one stands justified before God, not because of one’s own righteousness, but because of the righteousness of Jesus that he has graciously imputed to us.

4. A Transformed Life
“Jesus answered…‘No one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew.’” (John 3:3)

The concept of spiritual rebirth has become greatly distorted and divisive over the years of Christian history, so much so that, in many circles, an artificial division is created between “born again Christians” and what might be labeled “normal” or “mainline” Christians. This division is as unfortunate as it is misleading.

Rebirth, according to Scripture, is not a theological dividing point or litmus test. Rather, it is an experience of being so inwardly transformed by the reality of Jesus Christ that one begins to think differently, act differently, prioritize differently, and live differently, all because the Way of Jesus has now become one’s personal Way.

For some, this rebirth is something dramatic and publicly obvious (such as an emotional experience at a church altar). For others, it is a quieter (but no less radical) reorientation of one’s life around the ethics and priorities of Jesus. And yet, no matter the particular experience of the rebirth, it is always the work of the Holy Spirit, bringing people into the new life that only Jesus Christ makes possible.

5. A Relationship with Jesus as Lord
“Then Jesus said to them all: ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.’” (Luke 9:23)

Although discipleship demands a relationship with Jesus as Savior, it also demands the lifelong journey of allowing him to become the Lord of every segment of one’s life. This is the journey of allowing oneself to be remade daily into the likeness of Jesus, in such a way that every part of one’s life begins to bear witness to the reality of his Lordship.

This experience of sanctification (being made holy) in Christ, while the work of God’s grace, is nurtured through the practice of several important spiritual disciplines:

-The Discipline of Prayer—growing in one’s prayerful intimacy with God, in such a way that prayer becomes a way of life, as natural as breathing and every bit as urgent

-The Discipline of Spending Time with Scripture—growing in one’s love for Scripture and one’s devotion to its revelation, in such a way that studying Scripture and meditating upon its Truth becomes a personal priority

-The Discipline of Worship—growing in the communal and individual practice of offering to God the only response that God deserves: heartfelt worship and praise

-The Discipline of Alignment with the Church’s Ministry and Mission—growing in one’s relationship with the church, not out of a desire to perpetuate an institution, but out of a desire to bring oneself into meaningful alignment with the discipling community that Jesus established through his life, death, and resurrection

-The Discipline of Gathering Regularly at the Lord’s Table—growing in our celebration of the Lord’s Supper and in our hunger for the bread of life and the cup of salvation

-The Discipline of Community—growing in one’s commitment to a covenantal and accountability-practicing community, since, according to Scripture, discipleship is to be personal but never privatistic or individualistic

-The Discipline of Stewardship—growing in the practice of honoring Jesus in the way one manages one’s financial resources, one’s time, and one’s talents

-The Discipline of Generosity—growing in a spirit of extravagant giving in such a way that one’s live begins to reflect the extravagant generosity of Jesus

-The Discipline of Ministry—growing in one’s participation in regular and tangible acts of ministry and mission, thereby putting hands and feet on the love of Jesus

-The Discipline of Working For Peace and Justice—growing both in one’s commitment to standing against all forms of evil and injustice and in one’s commitment to eradicating them in the church and world

-The Discipline of Love—growing in one’s devotion to loving God with heart, mind, and strength, and to loving one’s neighbor as one loves her/himself

While the different segments of discipleship described in this reflection have been enumerated in a numerically linear fashion, the life of discipleship is not always linear in its unfolding. Sometimes one finds oneself devoted to the sanctifying discipline of ministry or prayer long before coming to know Jesus as Savior. Likewise, the Holy Spirit will sometimes inspire a lifelong churchgoer to re-experience rebirth because of some newly discovered need for personal repentance and transformation.

Discipleship, in other words, is not a mathematical equation. It is a relational journey with Jesus Christ at its center. As is the case with any significant journey, discipleship is frequently unpredictable and unsettling. It will occasionally demand backtracking and unforeseen detours. And yet, if Christ remains at the center of the journey, one will have the blessed assurance that one is journeying in a redemptive direction and with the right Companion.

In John’s gospel, Jesus describes himself as the way, the truth, and the life. Ultimately, Christian discipleship is the transformational journey of allowing Jesus to become one’s personal WAY, one’s personal TRUTH, and one’s personal LIFE. Paradoxically, the journey is freely offered, and yet it costs a life. The exceptionally good news is that it is the most abundantly joyful and blessed journey that one can ever make.

Allow me to describe for you a vocational epiphany that I experienced in the first year of my first pastoral appointment in North Carolina, back in 1989. Early on a weekday morning I received a phone call from a church member. The conversation went something like this: “Pastor Eric, you need to go and see ________.” (I’ll call him Frank).

“Pastor Eric, you need to go and see Frank.”

“Why’s that,” I asked. “Is Frank sick?”

“No,” the church member said, “its worse than that. He’s angry. He’s angry at you, and he’s angry at the church.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Haven’t you noticed that Frank hasn’t been in worship for the last four weeks? And he told me that he stopped giving his money to the church too. I’m tellin’ you, preacher, you need to go and see him.”

So, I went to see Frank. He did not hesitate to make his way to into the heart of the matter: “Well,” Frank said, as I sat down in his living room, “it’s about time you came to see me.”

“Frank,” I said, “I hear you have a problem.”

“You bet I do,” he responded. And with that, Frank launched into a rather lengthy list of grievances. He didn’t like it that I preached a sermon on tithing because he believed that preachers should never talk about money. He didn’t like it that I asked a certain person to be the chairperson of the Finance Committee because he wasn’t fond of the person I asked and didn’t think that he was qualified for the job. He didn’t like it that I implemented both hymns and praise choruses in the liturgy of the Sunday Morning worship service. Most of all, he didn’t like the fact that the church was “permitting” me to do these things.

After listening to Frank’s complaints, I attempted to clarify what I was hearing. “Let me get this straight, Frank: instead of making an appointment to talk with me about these matters, you decided to stop coming to worship?”

“That’s right.”

“And instead of meeting me for a cup of coffee so that we could speak face to face, you decided to withhold your giving from the church’s ministry?”

“That’s right.”

“Frank, why would you do that?”

“Because,” he said, “I knew that if I would stopped attending and stopped giving, you’d come to my living room, and that’s exactly what you did?”

“So,” I continued, “you’re telling me that you pulled away from the church to do a little bit of spiritual pouting for the purpose of getting some attention from your pastor?”

Frank smiled with the confidence of a man who knew that he had me right where he wanted me. “Hey,” he said, “you can call it pouting if you want, but it got you here didn’t it?”

It was a profoundly epiphanal moment for me early in my ministry. I describe it that way because the experience opened my eyes to at least three revelations. First, it made me to understand with crystal-like clarity that the church, at its heart, is not as much an institution as it is a community. More specifically, the church at its heart and at its best is a community of Christ-followers who are connected by their shared desire to follow Jesus and their shared commitment to organizing their lives around the rhythms of his life, death, and resurrection. Some people come to this community and make the decision to invest themselves in its ministry. Others (like Frank) choose to leave simply because that are opposed to the way in which the community is conducting itself.

But that is the nature of community, isn’t it? It is dynamic rather than static, fluid rather than fixed. That day in Frank’s living room, the complexities and nuances of ecclesiastical community became clearer to me than they had ever been before. I found myself confronted that day by an angry man who wanted me to address his grievances and beg him to return to the “institution.” In a true community, however, people must be given the freedom both to come and to leave.

Second, my experience with Frank helped me to understand like never before that the integrity of the church community depends largely upon the way in which church people manage conflict. In that regard, the church community is very much like the community experienced in marriage or friendship or even the work environment. The integrity of each one of those contexts depends largely upon the way in which conflict is stewarded and processed. I probably don’t have to say much to convince you that many churches (and marriages and friendships and work environments) are in declining health precisely because their conflict is managed primarily through withdrawal and disinvestment rather than through discernment, exploration, and prayer.

Finally, my experience with Frank taught me that spiritual pouting is never a healthy and Christ-honoring way of managing conflict. In fact, following my encounter with Frank back in 1989, I made a decision that continues to inform my ministry in 2009. Specifically, I made the decision that I would never again devote a substantial amount of my pastoral energy to spiritual pouters.

Please don’t misunderstand the nature of my point. I am not suggesting that spiritual pouters are not precious to God. Nor am I suggesting that spiritual pouters are somehow beyond the boundaries of God’s saving and transforming grace. Nor am I suggesting that pouters are without valid concerns that deserve to be heard. What I am suggesting, however, is that spiritual pouters—people who manage their conflict by spewing venom, dropping out of the church’s ministry, and waiting resentfully to be wooed back by the pastor and other church leaders—have abandoned a communal ethic in favor of an individualistic desire to grumble. To invest substantive pastoral energy in the investigation of such grumbling honors neither the grumbler nor the church from which he or she is alienated.

Since that day back in 1989, I have not traveled to the living room of a spiritual pouter, nor have I made it a priority in my ministry to go after the absentee grumbler. I have prayed for them. I have sent them cards and notes, telling them that I am only a phone call away if they want to initiate a dialogue. I have reached out to them by inviting them back to church. But, since 1989, I have never validated people’s pouting or grumbling by giving to them an attentive audience in the comfort of their personal habitation. To do so would have been to communicate to them that disinvestment is an effective means of garnering pastoral attention.

That said, if a disgruntled soul were ever to call me on the phone and say something like this—“Hey pastor, do you think you could meet with me? I have some issues with the church that have made me very angry and I’d like to discuss them with you so that we can understand one another a little bit better”—I’d take him out to lunch that day. Because, with that simple phone call, with that simple moment of community-honoring initiative, that person would have moved from a manipulative spiritual pouting to a meaningful management of their conflict. I’ll make time for that kind of conflict management every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

In recent days, I have been journaling a great deal about my own self-centeredness—my frustrating penchant for slipping into the condition of believing that my journey is somehow all about me, my preferences, my comfort, my fulfillment.

When I enter into the deepest portions of introspection, I find within myself clear evidence of such self-centeredness. I also find it in the church. I find it in the manner in which people often discuss worship, stewardship, and mission (matters that are often approached with a spirit of narcissism rather than a spirit of obedience). I also find it in a world that would have us to believe that it is a good and healthy thing to satisfy every one of our appetites the moment it demands to be satisfied.

My reflections on the issue of rampant self-centeredness has inspired me to write a new song (which is often my way of processing things that are bigger than I can handle). My fear is that this song is far too “preachy” to be meaningful, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take for the sake of giving expression to what I hope is an authentically prophetic and accurate message.

The song is called, quite simply “Get Over Yourself.” Its message is for me as much as it is for anybody else. Here are the lyrics, for what they’re worth. I pray that they fall meaningfully upon your heart.

A story’s being told that’s very old
It’s a story that we hear from birth
“The fulfillment of our needs,” (so the story reads)
“Is the essence of a walk on earth”

Chorus:
Get over yourself
It’s not about you anyway
Why don’t you look past yourself
To see the panorama in which your life appears

Susie Essman, a gifted actress and comedian whose comedic skills I have long appreciated on the HBO series, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” has written a memoir that is scheduled to be released in October.

While I have not yet read the memoir, I have been intrigued by selected excerpts from the memoir that recently appeared in The New York Post. In one of those excerpts, Essman, who did not marry until the age of 53, gives expression to a sexual and marital ethic that I believe sheds important light on the way in which both sexuality and marriage are frequently conceptualized in contemporary culture:

So you marry a guy when you’re 25, and that’s it? That’s the extent of your sexual experience? That wasn’t for me. I always thought if wedding vows went something like: ‘For better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, and you’ll never have sex with anyone for the rest of your life,’ people wouldn’t be so quick to say, ‘I do.’

Although I approach these issues very differently than Essman does, I appreciate her honesty, not to mention her willingness to put her finger on the pulse of precisely what it is that makes the covenant of marriage so daunting: its permanence.

I wonder how many people in recent years have opted to alter the “until we are parted by death” portion of the traditional wedding vows in order to provide a moral escape clause should one or both of the parties grow weary of the marital union. And, even if such liturgical alteration were not permitted, I wonder how many brides and grooms look upon the “until death” reference as a quaint and unrealistic link to a bygone age.

It is not my desire to judge Susie Essman or anyone who may agree with her viewpoint. Judgment, after all, is best left to the heart of Almighty God, who is the only one qualified to render it. And yet, my efforts to discern what it is that troubles me about Essman’s viewpoint have led me to this observation:

Essman’s comments bear witness to the all-too-common penchant for conceptualizing human sexuality as one’s personal and private resource—a resource that each person, as the owner of the particular resource in question, is entitled to utilize as he or she sees fit. The danger, of course, is that human beings have a long and painful history of exploiting, misusing, and squandering whatever it is that they perceive to be their personal property, be it money, fuel, the environment, or sexuality.

Worth noting, however, are the rhetorical questions to which the Apostle Paul gives expression in 1 Corinthians 6:15. They are questions that bring us somewhere very close to the heart of the church’s historical understanding of human sexuality:

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! (1 Corinthians 6:15)

Which is to say, “Do you not know that your bodies, including your sexual organs, are not your personal property to utilize as you please. Rather, they are the property of Christ and are to be utilized in a way that honors his Lordship and in a way that illuminates the reality of his kingdom in the world.”

Last summer, I had the privilege of participating in an interview process in which some of my brothers and sisters in Christ had the opportunity to ask me anything that they wished to ask me about my personal theology, my interpretation of Scripture and doctrine, and my vision for the church and its ministry. As one might imagine, the issue of homosexuality came up in that process more than once. Even if the word “homosexuality” did not find its way into all of the inquiries that were made of me, the weighty division in the United Methodist denomination over that particular issue was palpable in every question that made reference to human sexuality.

Like many of you, I am weary of the issue and the debate that surrounds it. I have very dear friends who stand passionately on opposite sides of the issue, and I find myself often attempting to stand on the bridge between them (which is often a bridge over very troubled water). Like many of you, my desire is to honor the teaching and spirit of Scripture while at the same time honoring what some of my brothers and sisters consider to be the further revelation of God’s Spirit. The problem with standing on a bridge, however, is that the one standing on the bridge gets run over from both directions!

At any rate, when I found myself confronted with those questions last summer, I did not respond with declaratory certainties or a detailed analysis of why self-avowed, practicing homosexuals should or should not be permitted to be ordained. Some were looking for that kind of response. But that was not what was on my heart to offer.

What I did offer, however, was my deeply held conviction (based on 1 Corinthians 6:15) that human sexuality is not a human commodity but a divine gift from the One to whom it ultimately belongs. Therefore, a crucial portion of the church’s ministry is to help followers of Jesus Christ (be they heterosexual or homosexual) to live more faithfully into a Christ-honoring stewardship of their sexuality, in such a way that even their sexuality might be subordinated to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Naturally, such subordination will have different implications depending upon one’s sexual orientation, life situation, and status of relationship. But the common ground is the sacred territory of seeing sexuality as a gift to be stewarded rather than a property to be hoarded or exploited.

Interestingly, Susie Essman’s observation (with which this blog post began)—that monogamy at a young age “wasn’t for [her]” and that she needed a more expansive and creative sexual “experience” than that—bears witness to a perfectly understandable result of a property-oriented approach to human sexuality. It is an approach that would treat sexuality as a utilitarian commodity, the purpose of which is to satisfy our sexual appetites in whatever ways they manifest themselves. In such a viewpoint, the marital promise of fidelity until death seems like an absurd stifling of our sexual capitalism.

In the countercultural ethics of Jesus, however, the promise of sexual fidelity to one person until death parallels the absurd grace of a Christ who promises to be monogamously faithful to his Bride for all eternity. It is a different way of looking at the world. It is a different way of conceptualizing human sexuality. And, to be sure, it is a different way of practicing stewardship over the members of our physical body, which, as Scripture reveals, are members of Christ rather than private property.

Part of what I love about the Psalms in the Old Testament is the way in which they run the entire gamut of human emotions. Granted, we tend to give more attention to the psalms that are comforting and cheerful in spirit: “The Lord is my shepherd…” or “Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth…” or “Enter the gates of the lord with thanksgiving, and enter the courts of the lord with praise.” Those tend to be the psalms that we choose to memorize.

But as one moves throughout the Psalter, it becomes very clear that the Psalmist is no stranger to the darker moods of the human condition. Sometimes one finds the psalmist angry—angry at God and angry at other people. Sometimes one finds the psalmist a bit sarcastic and cynical. And sometimes one finds the psalmist heartbroken and weeping:

“As a deer longs for flowing streams,” are the words of the 42nd Psalm, “so longs my soul after you, O God.”

Don’t sentimentalize the imagery of that. In a time of severe drought, the sight of a deer desperately panting for water is not a pretty sight. A thirsty, panting deer is not far from complete dehydration and death.

Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt so depleted by the circumstances around you, so spiritually dehydrated by your grief or your pain, that it felt as though you were panting, spiritually speaking, desperately panting for the refreshing water of God’s presence that seemed to be nowhere to be found. That is the kind of condition that the psalmist calls to mind with this imagery. It is not a cheerful condition. It is a condition of severe spiritual thirst. I’m convinced that many of you know what that condition feels like.

“My tears have been my food day and night,” the psalmist continues in Psalm 42, “while people say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?’”

Have you ever cried yourself to sleep over a broken heart that you are reluctant to reveal in the light of day? Have you ever done so much crying that the tears ran down your cheeks and across your lips so that you could taste their saltiness as they became your food for the day?

This is the emotional condition of the psalmist in the 42nd Psalm. He does not tell us about the specific circumstances that are causing his grief. Had he lost a loved one? Were his family members suffering? Had he come down with a severe illness? Had an enemy taken over his land and destroyed the spirit of his people? We don’t know. And we don’t have to know, do we? Perhaps the particulars concerning the circumstances are not what’s important here. What is important is that, in Psalm 42, the psalmist does not feel as though he is being cared for by a loving shepherd who makes him to lie down in green pastures and who leads him beside the still waters. That is a different psalm and a different mood. In Psalm 42, we find a psalmist who feels broken and desperate and strangely disconnected from the presence of God.

So, what does the psalmist do? How does he manage his grief and despair? Quite simply, he thinks back. He remembers. He spends time calling to memory the faithfulness of God in the past:

“These things I remember”, writes the psalmist in the fourth verse of the 42nd Psalm. “These things I remember as I pour out my soul.”

He goes on to talk about the memory of more joyful days of worship in the temple, when the entire multitude of people joined together in songs of salvation. He then goes on to talk about places in which he had apparently encountered the presence of God in powerful and life-changing ways: One of those places is the River Jordan, where Jesus himself would eventually be baptized. Another one of those places is the Hermon Mountains, tall peaks where perhaps the Psalmist had a vision of God’s sovereignty and majesty. Still another one of those places is Mount Mizar (Mizar is a word that literally means little mountain), a relatively small hill where perhaps the Psalmist experienced God’s comforting grace during a time of extended prayer. “These things I remember,” writes the psalmist. “These things I remember.”

When confronted with a season of pain and suffering, what is it that the psalmist does? He spends time remembering. More specifically, he spends time remembering those transformational glimpses of God have been given to him throughout his life, those revelatory encounters with God that filled him with a life-altering awareness of God’s presence and God’s power and God’s goodness. The grieving psalmist deals with his present suffering by turning to God’s faithfulness in the past, not for the purpose of dwelling on the good old days, but for the purpose of regaining a vision of a God who is greater than his suffering and who still deserves to be praised.

It is a scripture that reminds us that, when we are confronted with pain and suffering, our memory is important. Because, through our memory, we can join the psalmist in remembering what God has done in the past, thereby regaining our sense of conviction that that same God is holding us in the present and carrying us forward into a redemptive future.

One of the most important purposes of the church’s ministry is precisely this: the church’s ministry helps its people to remember. When we gather to sing the hymns of faith, what are we doing? We are helping one another to remember the majesty of a God who deserves nothing less than our most vibrant songs of praise. When we read from the scriptures that have been in existence for thousands of years, what are we doing? We are helping one another to remember the story of the things that God has done throughout history. When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, this meal that Jesus instituted on the night when he gave himself up for us, what are we doing? We are helping one another to remember the life, death, and resurrection of the One in whose grace we are set free and by whose name we are saved.

In a notoriously forgetful world, one of the most important purposes of the church’s ministry is to help its people to remember, so that, like the psalmist, we might be able to say even in seasons of hardship, “These things I remember. These things I remember.”

In your personal walk with Christ, what are the things that help you to remember your most significant encounters with God? What are the things that help you to remember that day when you first came to Christ? That day When you first experienced God’s healing? That day When you first found yourself making different decisions because of the transformation that the Holy Spirit had brought about within you?

Over the last couple of months, I have begun keeping a photograph on the nightstand beside my bed. The photograph was taken on a Sunday morning in the late summer of 1989 (20 years ago). It is a photograph of the very first baptism at which I ever officiated as a pastor. I’ve officiated at hundreds of baptisms since this day, but this was the first.

I was so excited. Back then my sense of God’s calling upon my life was fresh and powerful. I felt as though I had been equipped with a vision and a vocation and a purpose that would carry me through anything. On that day, when I held that baby in my arms, tears of joy ran down my face. As a 23-year-old, I sensed that I was right smack dab in the middle of where God wanted me to be.

And so I keep the photograph on my nightstand these days, and I look at it every morning when I wake up. Why do I do that? Quite simply, I do it to remember. I do it to remember the excitement of that day. I do it to remember that the God who called me to ministry that day is still calling me to ministry 20 years later.

That kind of remembrance is important to me. That kind of remembrance is sometimes what sustains me when I find myself frustrated with ministry. On those days when I feel spiritually dehydrated (like a deer panting for streams of water); on those days when I feel that I am not effective enough as a pastor; on those days when I’m heartbroken by my own behavior or the disordered priorities of the church’s people, this simple photograph has a way of helping me to remember that it’s all about Jesus and that the journey is still very much worth the investment.

What are the things that help you to remember the Lordship of Jesus over your life? What are the things that help you to remember what that Lordship has meant to you over the years?

Those, I think, are important questions. Because, as the psalmist helps us to understand, sometimes our remembrance of how God has been with us in the past is the key to managing the heartache that we experience in the present so that we might be able to approach the future with a sense of holy hope.

Have you ever been bothered by someone’s extravagance? Allow me to make that question even more specific. Have you ever been bothered by the way in which someone’s extravagance interferes with the accomplishing of your pre-established agenda?

It is an interesting word, extravagant. It is a derivative of two Latin words: “extra” which means, literally, “outside;” and “vagari” which means “to wander.” Extravagant, then, means wandering outside, or, more specifically, wandering outside of what is normal. Traveling beyond what is expected. Doing something that takes us outside of the typical routine.

Based upon that definition, have you ever been bothered by the way in which someone’s extravagance (i.e., someone’s willingness to wander outside or beyond what is normal) interferes with the accomplishing of your pre-established agenda?

When I was a small child, my mother always allowed me to put the family’s envelope in the offering plate during Sunday morning worship. In fact, beyond allowing me to do it, she expected me to do it. I think that she saw it as an opportunity to teach her son something about the urgency of investing in the church’s ministry.

One day, when I was 5 or 6, I looked closely at the envelope as the offering plate came around. For some reason, on this particular day, the mathematics and the economics of that envelope began to make cognitive sense to me. My mind, by that point in time, had developed to such an extent that I was able to realize how large an amount of money was in that envelope. (My parents have always been faithful and generous givers to the church’s ministry.)

What do you think my initial reaction was to my recognition of my parents’ substantive offering? Do you think that it was a joyful and supportive reaction? Do you think it was “Wow, Mom and Dad, God bless you for your generosity to the church and God bless you for raising your son to understand about the centrality of generosity in the life of discipleship to Jesus Christ!”

Not quite.

Rather, my initial reaction as a five or six year old boy was something like this: “What a stupid idea to put this much money into an offering plate! Do you know how many comic books this money could buy? Do you know how many GI Joe accessories this money could provide? Do you know far this money would go in the purchasing of the Atari Pong Game?”

I essentially thought to myself that day, “Mom and Dad, I don’t like the fact that you are giving away this amount of money because I have some very clear ideas about how this amount of money could be used in the enhancement of your son’s life.”

It may have been the first time in my life that I resented what I perceived to be my parents’ extravagance. Extravagance was probably not even a word in my vocabulary at that point. But I knew that my parents willingness to put that amount of money into an offering plate every week represented an effort to go outside of what I perceived to be reasonable. And, on that morning, I resented it.

It reminds me of Judas’ reaction to Mary’s eagerness to anoint the feet of Jesus with expensive perfume—an act of extravagant adoration described in the 12th chapter of John’s Gospel (John 12:1-8). Do you remember Judas’ complaint in that moment? It was something like this: “What’s the meaning of this?! We could have sold that perfume for a lot of money, all of which might have been used to minister to the poor.”

Judas, you see, is eminently practical in his view of ministry and seems to have the best of intentions. He sees Mary’s behavior as needlessly extreme, especially given the practical needs of the poor, and he resents Mary’s extravagance. He resents it, much as I resented the extravagance of my parents’ Sunday morning offering envelope.

“Hey, Mom and Dad, this money could be used to take care of your family, what are you doing putting it into an offering plate?”

“Hey Mary, that perfume could be sold to feed the poor, what are you doing it pouring it onto the feet of Jesus?”

Jesus graciously accepted Mary’s extravagance as an act of worship, but Judas attempted to prevent it. Jesus seemed to sense Mary’s eagerness to go beyond what was normative in order to render an expression of adoration that was as dramatic as it was doxological. But Judas was not pleased with the offering because it did not align with his preconceived agenda.

The pondering of that biblical moment makes me wonder how frequently I talk myself out of extravagance in my personal discipleship. How frequently do I allow myself to become so idolatrous about the practical that I forget about the sweetness of doing something prodigious— something out of the ordinary, something practically wasteful—in my adoration of God.

From 1984 until 1990, my father was the district superintendent of the Johnstown District of the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference. During a portion of those six years, Johnstown led the entire nation in unemployment. (Some of you remember those years and how difficult they were around these parts.)

But here’s the interesting thing: During that same period of time (1984-1990) the Johnstown District frequently led the entire conference in the percentage of its mission share giving. (The mission share is an amount of money that the local church offers to the general church for is ministry around the world.)

Did you get that? In the mid 1980’s, when Johnstown led the entire nation in unemployment, the Johnstown District offered, by percentage, more money to the ministry of the church than any other district in Western PA.

I once asked my father how he explained this inconsistency. “I don’t,” he said. “because it defies logical explanation.”

“All I know,” he said, “is that not even a troubled economy can prevent God’s people from wanting to be extravagant in their generosity.”

That was the first time that I had ever heard the word extravagant in connection with the church’s ministry. And the context for that extravagance was a hurting city in Western Pennsylvania called Johnstown, where many were unemployed, but where the Holy Spirit was still inspiring an uncommon generosity.

Here’s the point, I suppose: The extravagant generosity of those who have been transformed by Jesus Christ is not at all dictated by the condition of the economy. Rather, the extravagant generosity of those who have been transformed by Jesus Christ is dictated by the transformational work of the Holy Spirit in the depths of a human soul.

These days, I find myself praying for a spirit of extravagance in my discipleship. If I may borrow the biblical metaphor, I am praying my way into the kind of discipleship that will inspire me on occasion to anoint the feet of my Savior with the sweet perfume of spontaneous and profligate generosity. Does that sound right to you?

I have become increasingly interested in the imagery of margins as a means by which to conceptualize the human community. Where do we create margins, socially and spiritually speaking? Who occupies those margins? Where is the church in relationship to those margins? And, more fundamentally, where is Christ in relationship to those margins?

At any rate, in recent days, I have been wrestling with the creation of a song (which, quite frankly, is the best way to describe my songwriting process). I want the song to be an expression of my reflection on margins. Here are the lyrics that I have so far. I offer them as a prayer today.

“The One in the Margins”

Final Chorus:
Help me to see the Christ in the margins
Help me to know his journey’s design
Help me to be with Christ in the margins
Standing with him whose love is now mine