The Odd Ball Church

 In my last blog I wrote about the challenge of exposing our children to both the Christian faith and the pubic school environment.

This morning I read this:  “A few years ago a feature in the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer called the church I served “The Odd Ball Church.”  It wasn’t a slur.  The reporter got it just right. What else would a gathering of Christians be but at least a little odd — at odds with the counsels of timidity and security, comfort and consumption; at odds with the way of injustice, exploitation and discrimination; at odds with the stifling ways of institutional self-serving and pompous self-righteousness and the idolatry of inflated nationalism”. What else but odd would any group be that took Christ seriously, that tried to strive for God’s kingdom?

Strive! Be odd! That involves taking risks.  It means talking on controversial issues because they’re the ones that matter:…..

To take Christ seriously is to be at least a little odd, Thank God.”  (pages 26 & 27  The Haunt of Grace by Ted Loder.)

And I had to smile.

Following Christ’s ways must seem a bit odd to a world like we living in today.

Yet to believe in a God, in Jesus skin, allows us to face the future — tomorrow — with an assurance that no matter the outcome, of the worst situation, God will create something better.

Better by taking evil and making good 

¹⁹But Joseph said to them, ‘Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? ²⁰Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.(Gen. 50)

Imagine Joseph’s kind of mentality being the norm in the land of the living today.

I dare say that the majority would call Joseph a wimp, a fool or someone who has lost touch with reality — quite odd.

Am I being negative?  No I am not.  I am just being forthright in my assessment of the kind of culture -- this kind of world -- that I have been experiencing in the last ten years of so.

And that assessment is a challenge to the ordinary everyday Christian.  It challenges our  faith in the goodness and power of our Creator God that creates good out of not so good.

What we would be wise to remember is that God is not the one who has created the huge disturbance of mores and values of his people.

And you might suggest:  Well God could have stopped it.  Whatever it is.

However, the God I believe in doesn’t treat us like puppets.  

The God I believe in gives us the choice to be “odd” or not.

God doesn’t make the human situations.  God just deals with the consequences; and not-so-good choices that humans make. 

Sunday School, Public School?

 Have you ever thought about what we do to our children when we confront them with two very different cultures as they grow up?

From the time they are born we bring them into the faith environment where they are exposed to the love and acceptance of God.

When they get old enough they go to Sunday School where they do a lot of talking about Jesus and how much he loves them.

They learn the “Golden Rule” and begin to understand the treatment of others is a prime value for living with others.

Then the day comes when we watch them go off to their first day of public education. 

And their little live begin absorb some much different set of rules.

I remember, one Rally Day, I asked the congregation:  “Why do we do that?”

Why do we bring our children to be educated, by Christian Sunday School teachers, about Jesus and God”

Why is that so important?

One day, just after that Sermon, I was talking with my grandchildren about their experience at school.

As they talked I couldn’t help but wonder about the huge differences between public education and Christian education.

Between the Faith Communities value and the larger world’s rule and values.  As I thought about all the teachings of our modern society many questions  began to invaded my mind.

And my thinking took this route: In bring children to Sunday School, confirmation class, we are asking them to be open to Christ’s ways. To live their live believing in something unprovable, and in many ways illogical — unrealistic.

Think about this, Christian education teaches things like loving others as Jesus loves.  They are taught things like the importance of being humble, kind, gentle, forgiving etc.

They are taught about how to live with others by supporting, encouraging and trying to understand differences caring -- for their welfare.

And most importantly they are taught to have faith — trust — in the truth as God promised.

Then on Monday they learn a different set of rules.  Rules that seem to be much more crucial to their everyday existence: getting ahead, being a success, being self sufficient.

They are taught the importance of logic, facts and proof.  They are taught about competition and the importance of winning, being #1, the very best.

When you think about it — except of kindergarten — there is not much in this public, daily message about taking care of one’s neighbor.

We have to realize that we are offering, rather giving, them conflicting messages. 

Clear messages, and necessary messages, bumping up against themselves in these young, impressionable minds.

People bring their children to get a Christian education in hopes that they find the truth of life.

Then they are sent into a world to be little human computers who think logically and the need for competitive living.  Six days out of seven that is the message they get.

Now tell me if I am incorrect, but doesn’t it seem like there is something very illogical about that picture?   Something quite confusing to children?   And I dare say to adults as well?

What is problematic is, not that children should not go to public school; but how they can  learn to navigate — reconcile — what they are daily presented with.

In the beginning God created everything to be “very good.”

A world where all creatures are meant contribute to the well being of the total environment.  Meant to blend into a united front with the message of God’s trut -- lived out by all, with their individually created purpose. 

Think about this, somewhere the key messages of God’s worldview has gotten all mix up.

So, I am wondering about why we take our children to Sunday School.  

Indeed why do we come ourselves to worship each week?

What I am thinking is that we come and bring our children each week because we are looking for a better way.  We are trying to fine something “other” — God’s original design for all he had made.

We are looking for something better — more life giving.

You see instinctively, if for no other reason, we know there is something more to life than the physical world of sense and time.

 

An interesting thing about this strange world of faith, we come seeking something we can’t quite believe.

The very thing we search the hardest for, we find difficult to believe.

Are we actually suppose to love our enemies and pray for those who hurt us?  Are we really suppose to turn the other cheek when struck?  What about forgiving seven times seventy?

But we come.

And Sunday by Sunday Jesus puts his fingers in our ears, and spits and touches our tongues; and prays “Eph-pha-tha.”   Be open to my truth,  listen to my voice today.

However it works, we instinctively know that the true source of our lives is wrapped up, and dependent upon, the message we come to hear each week.

So we come back week after week hungry to hear and finally to believe

Or, at least we pray to live his ways out in, the deaf and dumb, world that is noisy and demanding.  

A world that asks us to compromise.  Compromise the very thing that gives our live meaning and purpose.

That is why we come and bring our children.

1 Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. ³²They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. ³³He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. ³⁴Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ ³⁵And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. ³⁶Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. ³⁷They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’  (Mark 7)

'Is God's Grace Not Good Enough For You?"

 There are many folks who want to limit God’s gracious love and acceptance.  

You have heard me on this subject before. 

They want to put God in a tiny box filled with lots of expectation for  his human creatures.

I talked about this in a recent blog. 

                                                    I know.

But we hear this ancient call from God, in the book of Isaiah: 

for my house shall be called a house of prayer

   for all peoples. 

⁸ Thus says the Lord God,

   who gathers the outcasts of Israel,

I will gather others to them

   besides those already gathered.(Is. 56)

Have you ever noticed how powerful the little words in scripture are?  In this passage the little word  “all” is clearly being pronounce:

for my house shall be called a house of prayer

   for all peoples. 

In my simple thinking this means God is over all, encompasses all, includes all who come to him and to his temple.

That is the great plan of a wildly accepting God.

That is, that even we imperfect soul are to be included in God’s kingdom.

I am writing about this, this morning, because historically there has been a persistent theme preached in pulpits, and taught in our Sunday School — that to be acceptable to God one needs to be “good,” “perfect” and “irreproachable” in looks and behavior.

I will call that a giant — huge — myth.

I call it a myth because no one is perfect.

We all have faults.  

Not one of us is irreproachable.

We all have unkind, not nice, judgmental thoughts the move through our minds.

We all think we are not worthy of God’s love and forgiveness.

So, I invite you to think about those Jesus chose to hang-with the most.

Or, think about the mumbling — grumbling  — Hebrew mob; who God was so patient with for forty years of wondering in the wilderness.

Then I am going to ask you a question, asked of me many years ago, “Is God’s grace not good enough for you?

Just Close Your Eyes

 I’m frustrated.  Frustrated about the world situation — who isn’t?  But it is more than that.  It is the frustration of not doing anything positive.

 

I woke up this morning from a very disturbing dream.  It was about a black man, taking a stand, by sitting on a corner step.  He had a need, a need to be taken seriously. 

The dream is muddled in my mind now; but it had to do with my desire to help this man and his family in some meaningful way.  

But as always, this situation got more and more complicated.

As I lay there my mind was thinking about how I could be of help.  And the question came: What do you want to help?

It is an important question I think.

Then my mind went to a much larger scale of the dilemma.  This world is made up of different kinds of people — different skin, different religions, different everything.

In the moment I  became very conscious of my own mindset and began to question, wonder, what we could do to adjust our personal life conditioning.

Conditioning, that was our growing up year — our life forming years.

Specifically the truth of how all of we different beings grew up condition in a specific mindset — and why that conditioning was understood as simply true. 

“Blacks” and “whites,” “yellows” and “browns” and “red skins” all grew up with different cultural understandings.

And my mind asked:  “When you look at someone who is a different color — but are the same inside — how is it that the two of you can come to some better, deeper, understanding of each other?

How can we together find new ground?

My answer: close your eyes.

Just close your eye.  It made such good sense.  Just sit down facing each other and shut your eyes and talk.

No program, no agenda, no organized discussion.  Just two people that would like to be understood.

The man, in my dream, didn’t need my help.  He needed my respect.

No program can teach someone to respect.  How do you program someone to respect?

Thats as far as my morning wonders took me.  

Many years ago, in a seventh and eighth grade confirmation class, I had the kids lay down in a circle, on their backs, looking up at the ceiling.  The rule was they couldn’t look right or left only up. They could not see who was talking. They couldn’t respond, in any way, to another person’s thoughts.

I have found that young people are much braver to express themselves if they aren’t face to face with their peers.

I believe it is the same with adults.  

I can’t help but believe that if we could find a safe place for people to share their hopes and dreams; without the hindrances of their cultural conditioning, we could take tiny steps to some small kind of reconciling differences.

Heres my imagination:  A meeting room with spaces for two people to talk privately.  My mind is going to the old confessionals.  A place where the two people talking can’t see each other. The only rule is each party will not use past history to gain understanding.

Example: No identification that would reveal their skin color, personal victimization, etc. 

The experiment is to be anonymous.  A very controlled experiment like what they do with scientific experiments.  No one knew the others wider background.

The intention of this process is that people, hopefully, want to find a solution to the huge, gigantic, dilemma we find ourselves in today’s diverse world.

As I am thinking about all of this, I am reminded of the powerful move  ‘Freedom Writers.’  Hilary Swank played a young new teacher who found herself in a conflicted classroom situation. She met the challenge in a most genius way.

She got the kids to realize that they were all the same inside — that is they were all afraid.

 Long story, short, she got them to express themselves in a most private way — writing their thoughts and feelings in a notebook.

You’ll have to watch the movie in order to get the full affect.

My point is the impossible worked; because she took the time to meet the challenge rather than to throw up her hands.

It is my strong belief that we, as the church, need to follow her example.  We can do that by using our God given imaginations instead of following the same-old idea of programs and meetings.

Just my bias!

By the way, Jesus modeled the way of life he wanted us to follow.  He didn’t have a program.