Perceptions from a Pewboy

If you want to make some United Methodists squirm, ask them if they’ve been born again. I do that periodically, just because it’s fun. I find a perverse delight in confronting dignified mainliners with an issue like being born again because, often, they don’t quite know what to do with that issue. Born again language, after all, does not often find its way into United Methodist liturgy and theological parlance. We have left that language, for the most part, to some of our other brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. As a result, we have created a line of demarcation between those who are regular Christians and those who are born again Christians.

Not long ago, I asked a United Methodist senior citizen if she had been born again. Her response was predictable: “No, no,” she said, “I’m not one of those. I’m just a normal Christian.”

Her words, I think, point to the key difficulty that many mainline Christ-followers have with the issue of being born again: We have a pathological desire to be normal. To fit in. To be like everybody else. We prefer to be typical citizens who keep their faith private, who have just enough Jesus to get into heaven but not enough Jesus to make them weird. We resist born again language because of the way in which that language has been linked to “abnormal” people that we find objectionable. And when we are confronted with the question of rebirth, our response is often something like this: “Am I born again? No, no, I’m not one of those. I’m just a NORMAL Christian.”

The problem, however, is that, in the third chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus offers a teaching that we can neither ignore nor dismiss: “You cannot see the kingdom of God,” Jesus says, “without being born again” (sometimes translated “born anew” or “born from above”).

When Scripture speaks of the kingdom of God, it is not describing a geographical territory, defended with walls and soldiers. Rather, the kingdom of God is a realm of being in which the Lordship of Jesus Christ holds governing authority, a realm in which the way of God is given priority over every other way. The kingdom of God, in other words, is a way of living in which Jesus Christ occupies the throne of human hearts to such an extent that his followers begin to incarnate his way of doing things in every segment of their living. And no one can participate fully in this kingdom, according to Jesus, unless he or she is born again.

And please note, Jesus offers no parenthetical qualifiers whatsoever. He does not say, “Oh by the way, if you are a dignified United Methodist or Presbyterian or Roman Catholic who doesn’t care for the idea of being born again, that’s OK, we’ll find something more normal and comfortable for you.” We find nothing like that. Rather, Jesus’ teaching cuts across all denominational lines and all linguistic preferences in such a way that it confronts every single man woman and child who calls upon the name of Jesus for salvation. “NO ONE,” says Jesus, “can see or enter the kingdom of God without being born again.”

Being born again through JC means many things. At the very least, it means being justified (which is to be made right with God) and sanctified (which is to be made holy in Christ). When we allow those two biblical concepts to intersect, the intersection bears witness to the fact that rebirth in Christ means allowing ourselves to be inwardly transformed in such a way that we become people whose governing priority and whose joy in life is to be faithful to Jesus in all things. For some people, that will require a restructuring of their entire life. For other people (who are already kind-hearted) it will involve an internal reorientation. In every circumstance, however, rebirth will produce Christ-followers who are willing to think differently, act differently, conceptualize differently, prioritize differently, and live differently, all for the cause and kingdom of the One through whom they have been reborn.

I have a very dear friend who is suffering right now. In fact, he is fighting for his life against all odds. His family, as one might imagine, is suffering along with him.

The suffering of this family has driven me to my knees many times in recent days. The essence of my prayer has been this: “Bring healing, O God. Bring miracles. Bring something redemptive to this condition of suffering.” Along with the prayer, of course, have come the seemingly inevitable “why” questions: “Why do good people hurt? Why is there so much pain? God, why do you allow your people to suffer?”

There is nothing new about those questions. The Psalmist wrestled with them long ago.

Have you ever known people who looked upon their suffering as a punishment from God?

A man who had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer once whispered these words to me through his tears as he sat in a hospital bed: “What have I ever done to deserve this?”

A woman who had just lost her 23-year-old son in an automobile accident pulled me aside in the funeral home and said to me, “How could God be so cruel as to take my only child away from me like this?” She expected some kind of an answer.

A man who had just lost his job after 27 years with the same company stopped by my church office in order to articulate this viewpoint: “I must not be doing something right in God’s eyes,” he said, “because my prayers aren’t working.”

A 49-year-old woman whose husband had left her for his 28-year-old secretary and who had just been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis stood up in the middle of a divorce recovery workshop that I was facilitating and gave expression to this desperate sentiment: “I feel like God is out to get me for something and I don’t even know what I did.”

On September 13, 2001, two days after the terrorist attack on our country, the late Jerry Falwell gave his explanation for the tragedy by utilizing words that were something like these: “The feminists and the gays and the lesbians and the ACLU and the abortionists who have killed 40 million innocent babies have angered God, and God will not be mocked.”

Each one of those expressions emerges from the theological presupposition that all experiences of human suffering and hardship are manifestations of God’s judgment and God’s desire to present a tangible punishment for human wrongdoing. Such a theological presupposition implies something troubling about the very nature of God, doesn’t it? Specifically, it implies that the Creator of heaven and earth, is, at his heart, a rather malicious, perhaps even malevolent, deity whose methodology is to generate human suffering and then assign that suffering to particular people as a means of punishment for sins of which they may or may not be aware.

That theological idea, by the way, is not new. In fact, in the 9th chapter of John’s gospel, when Jesus and the disciples come upon a blind man who had been blind from birth, the disciples say something to Jesus that demands serious reflection: “Rabbi,” they say, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Do you sense the implications of their question? These disciples were harboring a worldview in which that man’s blindness could only be interpreted as a punishment from God, either for a sin that the blind man had committed, or a sin that his parents had committed for which he was being held accountable. In the disciples’ worldview, in other words, the man’s blindness was not simply the result of malfunctioning eyes. It was rather a form of suffering assigned by God to a sinner.

In what I think is one of the most important and revelatory teachings in the entire Bible, Jesus responds to the disciples’ question by telling them that their worldview is faulty. “Fellas,” he says, “neither this man nor his parents sinned. Rather, he was born blind so that God’s work might be revealed in him.” Which is to say, “disciples, your worldview is faulty and it’s time for a theological realignment. This man’s blindness is not a punishment for sin. It is simply a physical ailment that gives to God a significant opportunity to accomplish great things, even in the midst of this man’s blindness.”

Jesus heals the blind man in dramatic fashion, bringing him sight and thereby revealing the power of Almighty God. And yet, as dramatic as the blind man’s healing is, I do not believe it to be the most important healing in this story. Rather, I believe that the most important healing in this story is Jesus’ healing of the disciples’ broken worldview.

The disciples were absolutely convinced that the man’s blindness was a punishment for some sin. But Jesus incarnates a new worldview in their very presence—a worldview in which blindness and other forms of human suffering are looked upon, not as a punishment from God, but as an occasion for God to accomplish even greater things; a worldview in which human suffering is interpreted, not a curse, but as an opportunity for God to become more intimately connected with broken souls; a worldview in which God is prayed to, not as a malevolent deity who is eager to punish, but as a miraculous Parent who is eager to bring about miracles in the midst of the suffering of his children.

The implications of this new worldview that we find in Christ are enormous. When we find ourselves suffering and broken, when we find ourselves struggling with cancer or divorce or the loss of a loved one, the new worldview that Jesus liberates those experiences from the idea of punishment and illuminates them instead as divine opportunities for the miraculous. Sometimes God’s miracle will manifest itself as a dramatic fixing of the problem, as it did for the blind man in John 9. Other times, God’s miracle will manifest itself, not as an elimination of the suffering, but as a new way of living WITH or IN the suffering, so that the suffering no longer holds dominion over human souls.

Even as I type these words, I am praying for my friend who is suffering and his family. And I am wondering what the miracle will look like for them.

One of my favorite CDs from 2008 is the eponymous debut album from “Vampire Weekend,” released last January. I have been listening to the CD frequently in recent days.

The music of “Vampire Weekend” is, for many, an acquired taste. It is perhaps the year’s most vivid expression of postmodern eclecticism—an artistic amalgam of styles, including the unsettling syncopation of African rumba, the harmonic complexity of a baroque fugue, and the instrumental energy of American indie rock. Listening to “Vampire Weekend” is like eavesdropping on a jam session featuring Jack White (of “The White Stripes”) on guitar, G. F. Handel on harpsichord, and a Congolese rhythm section. It’s quite a ride.

Lyrically, I have been consistently impressed by the band’s unique blend of the cryptic and the concrete. Particularly meaningful to me is the song “I Stand Corrected,” the lyrics of which reflect a spirit of repentance that is not always easy to find in popular music:

I STAND CORRECTED

You’ve been checking on my facts
And I admit I have been lax
In double-screening what I say
It wasn’t funny anyway

I stand corrected

No one cares when you are wrong
But I’ve been at this far too long
To act like that when we should be
In perfect harmony

I stand corrected

Lord knows I haven’t tried
I’ll take my stand
One last time

Forget the protocol
I’ll take your hand
Right in mine

The song, in one sense, functions as a conversation between alienated lovers, a heartfelt acknowledgment of wrongdoing. In the wide open space of artistic interpretation, however, I also hear the song as a prayer—more specifically, the penitent prayer of a fallen sinner to the Creator from whom he is alienated. Think about what a prayer like that would sound like:

“You’ve been checking on my facts,” (i.e., “Lord God, nothing that I’ve done escapes the expansiveness of your discernment.”)

“I admit I have been lax in double-screening what I say,” (i.e., “I confess before You that I have offended you with my careless words and my unscreened behavior.”)

“It wasn’t funny anyway,” (i.e., “My sins have broken Your heart and the hearts of others.”)

“No one cares when you are wrong,” (i.e., “It would be convenient for me to rationalize my dehumanizing patterns of thought and action, since many would be glad to turn a blind eye to the profundity of my sin.”)

“But I’ve been at this far too long to act like that when we should be in perfect harmony,” (i.e., “I know better than to do the sinful thing I’ve done, thereby causing a dissonance between my heart and Yours.”)

“Lord knows I haven’t tried,” (i.e., “Lord, you know that, in my sin, I have failed to be obedient to your Way and available to Your Will.”)

“I’ll take my stand one last time,” (i.e., “I will dare to stand before your righteous presence as a fallen sinner.”)

“Forget the protocol. I’ll take your hand, right in mine” (i.e., “I lay aside the conventional wisdom that would have me to defend myself pridefully. Instead, I humbly and unequivocally place my stained hand in Yours, which is always perfectly clean.”)

“I stand corrected” (i.e., “I stand justified before You, not because of my own righteousness, but because of the righteousness of your Son that You have graciously imputed to me.”)

I should point out that “Vampire Weekend” is not a Christian band (as some of the band’s other lyrics make clear). Nevertheless, I have find myself listening to “I Stand Corrected” over and over again. Somehow the song feels like home to me.

Today, January 2nd, I begin a new season of ministry. I say that because, as of today, I am “officially” (whatever that means) the District Superintendent of the Washington District of the United Methodist Church. If you are not a United Methodist, and perhaps even if you are, those words may mean very little to you. By way of translation, suffice it to say that, for the first time in twenty years, I am not serving as the pastor of a local church. Instead, I am now a pastor to clergy and their families, a vision-caster and vision-helper for a number of congregations, and a trouble-shooter for a whole bunch of United Methodist believers.

I don’t even pretend to understand what all of that means, practically speaking. The learning curve is pretty steep for me in that regard.

Over the last few months, I have been prayerfully contemplating what expectations I bring to this new season of ministry. More specifically, I have been praying and journaling over these two questions: What do I expect of myself as a District Superintendent? And what do I expect of the clergy I superintend? Those two questions have led me to the following list that I will soon place before the clergy of the Washington District. I place it before you now because I am genuinely interested in your feedback. The list is kind of a work in progress. Let me know how it falls upon your mind and heart, no matter whether you are clergy or laity.

A Superintendent’s Expectations of Himself and the Clergy of the Washington District

1. An Ever-Deepening Love for God and People
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus identifies the greatest commandment in this fashion: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind…and a second [commandment] is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37).

The heart (“kardia”) is the physical essence of our being, the organ that is closest to the center of our physical sustenance. To love God with all our heart, therefore, is to practice faithful stewardship over our physical being, caring for our hearts and bodies in a way that honors the One who made them. Clergy are expected to grow in their commitment to physical health, including the maintenance of a healthy diet and a consistent program of physical exercise, thereby becoming more abundantly equipped to love God with all their heart.

The soul (“psuche,” from which we derive the word “psychology”) is the place of our deepest thoughts, feelings, passions, and emotions. To love God with all our soul, therefore, is to practice faithful stewardship over our inner being, caring for our emotional health and our spiritual growth in a way that honors the One who desires nothing less than an intimate communion with souls. Clergy are expected to grow in their commitment to the spiritual disciplines (such as prayer, study of Scripture and meditation upon its revelations, confession and repentance, worship, solitude, community, and regular participation in the Lord’s Supper), thereby becoming more holistically enabled to love God with all their soul.

The mind (“dianoia”) is a reference to the realm of our cognitive reflection and our rational analysis. To love God with all our mind, therefore, is to practice faithful stewardship over our intellectual development, caring for the formation of our minds in a way that honors the One who desires to be known, not only through feelings, but also through thoughts. Clergy are expected to grow in their commitment to the disciplines of lifelong learning, continuing education, and theological reading and reflection, thereby becoming more comprehensively energized to love God with all of their mind.

2. A Commitment to Personal Integrity
The word “integrity” is a derivative of a Latin word meaning “intact” or “whole.” People of integrity are people who commit themselves to authenticity, wholeness, and ethical intactness in their relationships, their administration, their self-care, their communication, and their personal conduct. Clergy are expected to commit themselves to living and ministering with the kind of integrity that bears witness to a holistic walk with Christ.

3. Participation in Incubator Groups
Communal accountability and collegial nurture are essential portions of our discipleship to Jesus Christ, who once promised to be uniquely present wherever “two or three” were gathered in his name. The incubator ministry is our conference’s most recent effort to create a spirit of authentic and intentional community among the clergy and laity of Western Pennsylvania. Clergy are expected to commit themselves to a positive participation in an incubator group and its ministry.

4. Tithing and Growth Beyond Tithing
In the ministry of the local church, clergy are to set the tone for generosity and boldness in giving. It is expected that clergy will teach both growth toward tithing and growth beyond tithing in the churches that they serve. Moreover, it is expected that clergy will model tithing and radical generosity in their personal walk with Christ.

5. A Commitment to the Payment of Mission Share
The local church’s mission share is part of the very lifeblood of United Methodism’s connectional ministry. When clergy and congregations commit themselves to paying their mission share in full, they enable the realization of every portion of the larger church’s planned ministry. Likewise, when congregations treat their mission share as optional, they hinder the church’s capacity to become all that God is calling it to be. Clergy are expected to be diligent, creative, and bold in helping their congregations both to understand and to meet their mission share.

6. Respect for Colleagues in Ministry
An eagerness to tear one another down is antithetical to the spirit of love in which we are called to live. Clergy are expected to encourage and support one another, to pray for one another, and to resist the temptation to speak negatively about colleagues when those colleagues are not present to defend themselves.

7. Hard Work
Clergy are expected to be disciplined about devoting substantial time and energy to the tasks of preaching, teaching, discipling, counseling, overseeing the church’s administration, visioning, and offering pastoral care, in order that every local church and every place of ministry might receive faithful, effective, and fruitful clergy leadership.

8. The Honoring of Sabbath
In the often-frenetic pace of life and ministry, clergy are expected to be Sabbath people, experiencing regular time away from work for solitude, communion with God, time with family, and rest.

9. Participation in District and Conference Ministry
United Methodist clergy are joined by a connectional covenant. District and conference ministry is a portion of that covenant. Whenever possible, therefore, clergy are expected to support district and conference programming and ministry through their participation.

10. A Stubborn and Prayerful Resistance to Cynicism and Chronic Negativity
Nothing corrupts the joy and vibrancy of the church’s ministry faster than the proliferation of cynicism and unrestrained negativity. All too often, even the church’s leadership allows itself to be drawn into this counterproductive spirit, choosing the drone of disparagement instead of the song of hope. Clergy are expected to resist such cynicism and negativity, thereby becoming instruments of prophetic joy and contagious encouragement.

11. A Commitment to Scriptural Holiness and Wesleyan Theology
Clergy are expected to grow daily in their embodiment of a biblical worldview and in their practice of a distinctively Wesleyan theology concerning God’s prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace.