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Blogging Holy Week, III

In my last post I made the claim that God never desired blood sacrifice.  And, if God never wanted sacrifice, then we need to rethink the story we tell about Jesus and the cross.

Now, I don't mean to say that there is nothing redemptive about the cross.  To the contrary, I believe that the cross of Jesus was indeed redemptive.  I do think that Jesus took upon himself the sins of the world.  I also happen to believe that Martin Luther King, Jr, bore the weight of the great sin of the South.  Suffering and death can be (but are not always) redemptive.  But I just don't think God demands blood.  Suffering and death are not redemptive because God requires them to balance the books, to erase a debt.

I do think, however, that God calls us toward sacrifice - and particularly sacrifice of ourselves.  The command to love the neighbor as the self is a call to sacrifice ourselves on behalf of our neighbor.

The confusion I see is where the emphasis is placed.  The emphasis is usually placed on the act of sacrifice, whereas I want to emphasize the act of love that ends in sacrifice.  The emphasis is usually placed on offering to God a sacrifice to pay back a debt caused by sin, whereas I want to emphasize the bearing the burden of another's sin to help bring wholeness into the world.  The emphasis is usually placed solely on the person of Jesus and an event that happened two millennia ago, whereas I want to emphasize our responsibility in a process that is ongoing so long as wholeness is not established.

So, on this so-called "Good" Friday, the challenge is for us to accept responsibility for our role in bringing peace and wholeness into the world.  Just because Jesus died on a cross does not mean that there is nothing left to be done.

And that is why, when I lead in the Eucharist (or Lord's Supper, or Communion), I adapt the traditional wording to the following:

This is the body of Christ, broken for us.  Take and eat.

May we also offer our bodies out of love for our neighbors.

This is the blood of Christ, spilled for us.  Take and drink. 

May we also spill our blood out of love for our neighbors.

Amen.

Blogging Holy Week, II

In my last post I expressed how the notion of God demanding blood sacrifice, though central to the traditional Easter story, bothers me.

Why is it that the Jews evolved and grew to understand that God does not thirst for blood, while Christians still have yet to reach such an epiphany?  Even in the Old Testament there were prophets like Micah and Jeremiah speaking out against the practice.  But not so with Christians.

Now, if you go to church and ask someone if they believe in blood sacrifice, they'll probably look at you like you're from Mars.  And then they'll tell you they that, of course, sacrifice is wrong.  If you push the matter, they might tell you that Jesus ended the need for sacrifice.

However, what our churches fail to realize is that the whole Easter story, as it is generally told, is predicated on the idea that blood sacrifice was needed in the first place.  You see, it wouldn't make sense for Jesus to be the end of sacrifice if there was never a need to sacrifice to begin with.

And that's what I believe, that God never demanded blood.

But, if God never desired blood sacrifice, then our understanding of Jesus needs some adjustment.  If God doesn't ask for blood, then Jesus is no longer the perfect sacrifice that makes sacrifice unnecessary.  So what do we make of Jesus and his death?

We'll continue to explore this issue over we move through Holy Week.

Blogging Holy Week

It's Palm Sunday, the day the Jesus was welcomed into the city of Jerusalem.  As depicted in scripture, it's a grand and glorious entry, though a bit comical and ironic.

In less than a week, however, the same people who extended welcome would turn into a lynch mob.  Now, I am against killing (anti-war, anti-death penalty, and I'd even go vegetarian if I could stomach veggies), but I think the crowd gets a bad rap.  You see, they had been taught to expect a certain kind of Messiah, one who would overthrow their oppressors.  And what great timing, it being Passover, the time set aside to celebrate when Pharaoh and Egypt were overthrown.

So the stage was set.  The long-awaited Messiah marches on the holy city to overthrow the new Pharaoh and the new Egypt just like what happened in the Passover story being celebrated.  At long last they would be free again, thanks to Jesus, the anointed one.

But, no.  Instead of overthrowing the Empire, he attacked the vendors and money changers in the Temple!  Instead of riding the momentum and growing support of the people, he turns on his followers.  All their hopes and dreams were bound up in this man from Nazareth, but he would disappoint them in much the same way as the ones before him.  They thought he was different.  They were wrong.

And so I understand their frustration, their anger.  I don't agree, but I see where they're coming from.  It's the traditional portrayal of God in the story that bothers me.

According to parts of the Old Testament (but, contrary to many, not all of the OT!) and parts of the New (e.g., the book of Hebrews), God demands a blood sacrifice to atone for sin.  And, says this interpretation, Jesus himself is the ultimate sacrifice.  After he dies on the cross for our sins, God is satisfied.

I may be heretical (what else is new?), but I'm not okay with a God who demands blood.  Sin is a real problem and I'm fine with Jesus offering himself on behalf of all humanity.  But I have a problem with a blood-thirsty God.

We'll work on a solution moving forward.

What is Smart Growth in Religion?

In the world of urban planning and development, Smart Growth is all the rage--and for good reason.  But what is the equivalent with regard to religious communities?

I've been thinking about growth because, over the course of this Lenten season, First Baptist Memphis has been studying Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism by Martha Grace Reese.  It's a book about church growth in mainline congregations.  Mainline, for those who are  unfamiliar with the term, is a term for Disciples, Episcopals, Lutherans, Methodists, Presebyterians, UCCs, and some Baptists.  They are usually moderate to liberal and have been leaders in the fight for equality in our nation.

Mainline churches, despite their key role in American history, have suffered a drastic decline in numbers over the past fifty years. Yet, there are some, though certainly a minority, who are experiencing growth.  Funded by a Lilly Grant, Reese studied what made those churches different and our church has been trying to learn from her findings.

Sure, our church could use a few more active members, but the recent focus on growth (and what our pastor calls the e-word: evangelism) has made me somewhat uncomfortable.  Where do you read of Jesus telling us to grow in numbers?  I don't recall reading that in my Bible, but I know there is a lot in there about loving the neighbor and being faithful to your God.

So, when Carol asked if I could lead the Connect4 class this past week for them, I knew what I wanted to discuss.  I wanted to know if others felt the same way.  I wanted to know if we were placing growth ahead of faithfulness.  I wanted to know what, according to our class, should be the relationship between faithfulness and growth.  I wanted to know what was more important to us, our particular church or God's Kingdom.

I was glad to discover that faithfulness to God and the Kingdom is key for our class, although we feel that this particular congregation helps us be more faithful than we would be otherwise.  And, because First Baptist helps facilitate our love of God and neighbor, we believe that it can likewise help others.  So we want to share our church with our community.

We don't believe that growth is necessarily good, but are interested in finding the equivalent to Smart Growth for churches.  And, as one person remarked, we are certainly interested in saving the corner of Poplar and E Parkway from becoming another Walgreens!  But, most of all, we know that our location in the heart of Midtown provides us with opportunities for and partners with whom to be faithful.

Growth is sometimes good and sometimes bad, but it matters not if you are not faithful.  Growth is not difficult to achieve, but faithfulness demands work and persistence.

So let us be more and more and more faithful.  Let us love and love and love some more.  Let us be the hands and feet of our God in the heart of Midtown Memphis (and beyond).  Our neighbors are waiting, waiting to be loved and welcomed and embraced.  In fact, our neighbors are already loving and welcoming and embracing.  Let's partner with them and, with the love of God, provide a larger framework for such love.

Preparing for Lent

Carol asked if I would send this link of 15 ways to fast during Lent.  We are just over a day away from Ash Wednesday, so start thinking now about if and how you would like to fast during these next 40 days.


If you can't (or aren't interested in) abstaining from food, try going without your cell phone or computer or even just Facebook...for a day, a weekend, all of Lent.  Try the discipline of solitude, as we discussed on Sunday, fasting from the presence of others.  You may only be able to wake up a little earlier or stay up a little later than your family.  What about a day trip?  Or maybe you can do a weekend retreat.  Whatever works.

Just remember: the purpose of fasting is not to prove that you can do without, but to focus more on God.

And fasting or doing without is not the only way to "celebrate" the season of Lent.  It is also a tradition of many Christians to take up a discipline during these 40 days.  So you may also want to pick one of the disciplines in Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline.

We hope to see you on Wednesday at the First Baptist Church of Memphis, Tennessee, as "our Lenten journey starts with ashes" (to quote a hymn co-written by our minister of music and former pastor).

And don't miss our Taize service this Sunday during Connect4.  Maria will lead what promises to be a very meaningful experience.  For a glimpse of what's in store, listen to these free samples

 from the Taize community in France.

On Prayer (and Why I Just Don't "Get" It)

The Connect4 class at First Baptist Memphis is using Richard Foster's book, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, as our Sunday School literature.  The book is a study of classic spiritual disciplines and Foster lists twelve of them.  We discussed prayer this week.

I should start with a confession: prayer is not something with which I am entirely comfortable.  I don't understand it.  I don't understand what it is or how it works or how to do it, but I certainly understand why it is so important for most people.  In fact, it would be just as important for me, I'm sure, if I could only figure out what the hell it is.  But I just don't "get" prayer, a confession to which Greer replied with both grace and jest (a rare combination): "That's okay, we'll pray for you!"

Don't get me wrong; I can write and deliver a pretty good prayer.  I understand the "outs" of prayer, but not so much the "ins."  I've studied theology and understand how to make the words of prayer consistent with the thoughts of our best theologians.  I've also heard enough good prayers to know how to construct a prayer and what to say.  And I've heard enough bad prayers to know what not to say.

Now, I should also add that I have my own definition of prayer (in the spirit of Keith Green's "Make My Life A Prayer To You" or Joy Electric's cover) and I do that just fine.  I consider my re-definition of the word an attempt to re-claim it, the way feminists and African-Americans and others have re-claimed certain words.  Foster actually has a book called Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home that covers 21 different types of prayer and I'm okay with almost all of them.

The problem with this, however, is that I don't always feel that I am speaking the same language as other Christians.  For example, most people understand prayer as some kind of communication with God.  At its most basic, this means asking God for stuff.  But it also includes a quiet and stillness that listens.  And I am not sure what to do with any of this.

I'm not comfortable asking God for stuff because I'm not comfortable with a God from whom I can ask for stuff.  Such an understanding of God, although quite biblical, makes God like a person, complete with agency and being (or Being).  But I'm not quite sure God is really like that, heretical though I may be.

The bigger problem for me is that I'm really not comfortable placing thinking that God answers (or doesn't answer) prayer.  I'm uncomfortable with a God who has the power to cure Cancer and AIDS and Alzeihmer's...but doesn't.  I'm uncomfortable with a God who has the ability to stop the destruction that is Haiti or Katrina or 9/11...but doesn't.

I'm just not okay with God saying, "No, I think it is better that Vicki suffer and die of cancer" or "You know, it's okay that all those folks in Haiti, who were already suffereing from poverty, are dying."

That's just not the kind of God I want anything to do with.

But that's also the reason I'm not comfortable with prayer, as it is most commonly defined.

Still I am greatful to be a part of a people of prayer, those for whom my problems aren't problems.  I'm also glad to be a part of a group who responded to my confession that I don't "get" prayer with: "That's okay, we'll prayer for you!"

And, for them, I say: "Thanks be to God!"

A Missions State of Mind, Part One

I was invited to speak to the Religion 101 class this week.

Now, I remember when the class was founded, back when we were in Memphis before, and it has always been an interesting and intriguing class, somewhat of a renegade class.  This may or may not have been their purpose, but I have always seen them as a group who just said, "The heck with how it's always been done!  We're gonna do it our way!"  In other words, I'm not sure there's a more Baptist (truly Baptist) class around.

Churches oftentimes like to divide folks into neat categories according to age, marital status, etc.  Well, what happens to all the folks who don't fit those categories?  Religion 101 came to their rescue, saving them from all the weird looks and uneasy conversations.  Religion 101 provided a home for the homeless within the church.  And I've always respected that.

Churches also like to dictate what will be taught in their neatly organized classes.  It's long been custom to order some curriculum written by someone no one has even met, which isn't to say it's bad (far from it), and hope for the best.  Well, what happens when folks get tired of the literature, when all the quarterlies start running together?  Religion 101 came to break the mold, saving people from the monotony of the status quo.  Religion 101 announced that we don't need anyone to tell us what or how to study.  And I've always respected that.

And so I was honored to receive the invitation to speak with the class about missions, the topic they've been discussing for the past several weeks.

My thoughts, which will be divided into two posts, follow the narrative of my life, as my understanding of missions has evolved slowly over time.

First, my understanding of missions derived from the children's programs at the church in which I grew up.  For me, as a male, that meant RAs (Royal Ambassadors).  The GAs (Girls in Action), though, did a much better job educating the females about missions and encouraging to find creative ministry projects.

My next step was Training Union and Discipleship Training programs.  Here, we were taught about the church and our responsibility within it.  Even as a teenager, we were expected to be active leaders and, therefore, were given responsibility.  TU and DT helped train us to fulfill such responsibilities, which included weekly visitation to visitors and prospects.

Still, missions revolved around telling folks about Jesus, until our youth group took a trip to New Orleans to paint some houses in a run-down part of town, worse than anywhere I'd ever been.  We split into teams, with each time painting half the day and working another project the other half.  My team worked at a homeless shelter, the first time I had actually met (and possibly even seen) a homeless person.

We went to Gatlinburg the next year and Savannah the next, working in trailer parks and housing projects, respectively.  These trips opened my eyes to another world, a world where telling folks about Jesus had to take a backseat to making sure folks had their daily bread.  And, back home, we started a few local projects, discovering that we didn't have to travel to find great need.

During college, I spent two summers with the Smoky Mountain Resort Ministries (SMRM) in the position of Innovator. It was my job to work a job and find creative ways to minister to the employees, then also serving alongside the other summer missionaries during my off time.  I worked at a go-cart track that had over 100 employees during the summer tourist season.  I worked alongside them, forming meaningful relationships and leading various activities for them.  Here, I learned how to do missions at work.

At SMRM, I also learned several ways to do missions in the community.  Several on our staff were blessed with musical talents and would play in downtown Gatlinburg a couple nights a week.  It was my job to talk to the folks who gathered around to listen, who often wondered who these folks were.  We also provided coffeehouses for teenagers, providing a safe space to those who really had nothing to do except get in trouble.

During my second summer, I also joined with a friend to start another ministry for the local arts community, welcoming and celebrating the gifts of a creative God.  These folks weren't religious, but that didn't matter, as we a fondness and an appreciation for each other grew.  We would visit their shops and bring them treats.  They would show us what they were working on and have us over for dinner.  These were folks the church didn't want, but they were our kind of people.  And they taught us a thing or two about God's love, even as we were trying to bring God's love to them.

After my time with SMRM, I began organizing concerts.  I had friends who were in bands and they had friends who were in bands (and so on).  They started looking to me for help finding gigs.  Since they were all church folk, even if from other churches, I immediately thought about this great space we had in our old sanctuary.  We were given the okay and I made up flyers.  With three days notice, we got 150 kids in.  So we started pushing for another.  Finally, they relented and, with a week notice, over 200 kids showed.

At this point, we thought we had something special going, something that could become semi-regular.  But the church had other ideas.  I don't know who made the final decision, because I was not privy to the conversation, but my contact told me we could not have any more concerts.  Here we were reaching kids who would never step a foot inside a church, kids with purple hair and tattoos and dog collars, but the church said it didn't want those kids.

Well, we said, "Screw it!  We don't need the church.  We can be the church without the building."  So we started looking around town for a building to rent that didn't required a deposit.  And the next show, with bands from three different states, pulled in over 300 kids.  It changed our understanding of missions.  And it changed our understanding of church.

***to be continued***

Going Deeper

Connect4 has begun a study of Richard Foster's book, Celebration of Discipline, about spiritual disciplines.  A week will be spent on each of the following:

• Inward
• Meditation
• Prayer
• Fasting
• Outward
• Simplicity
• Solitude
• Submission
• Service
• Coorporate
• Confession
• Worship
• Guidance
• Celebration

Last week, Carol and Greer introduced the book and the ideas behind the study.  Two quotes struck me.

First, there was a Tolstoy quote on the board that read: "Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing one's self."

The second quote was from Foster: "Superficiality is the great curse of our age."  And Greer responded by saying, "We need deep people, y'all!"

These were good quotes to kick off our study, for what do spiritual disciplines do if not make us deeper people and changed selves?

So, may we become deeper people and and changed selves together over the next several weeks.