A Divided Heart

[Note Well: A reminder that this is a space that represents and speaks for myself only, as an individual. I happen to be a citizen of the USA, and I also happen to be a Christian minister.  But this blog is not a space that officially represents either of those organizations.  It is my space for reflection and conversation only, and is not meant to be interpreted as anything else.]

Earlier this morning, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional, and then declared that they had no standing to rule on Proposition 8, which had come initially from California. By deciding in such a way, it has essentially made California the most recent state to recognize the right of marriage for same-sex couples.

With this news, my heart (personally) is joyful, and I want to do nothing but take to the social media-sphere to celebrate with many friends and even relatives who are now able to appreciate the same rights and responsibilities that I and my wife can. It makes me very happy to see them happy, and more so, validated and affirmed. I can not claim to understand what it feels like to have someone or some entity tell me that my love for my spouse is invalid and a sham; I have seen too much love from my gay friends and family to even consider that it is inauthentic. In many cases, it has been healthier and more committed than other marriages/relationships I have seen…

But I find, on this morning, that I am struggling to be too celebratory, at least in an outright fashion, for I am afraid.

I am afraid, because my vocation has me in a position and a place where, if I were to speak too loudly or happily about the decisions of this morning, then I will no longer be in a position to act as a guide for the very people to which I have been called to do so. I am afraid that it will hurt my ability to reach out and connect with them and the community at large, to be able to share myself with them, and vice-verse, in honest relationship, to seek together the self-same Spirit of God which not only brings us together but continues to work in mysterious and sometimes frightening ways.  I am afraid that it could even cost me my income, which is desperately needed at the moment. The denomination in which I serve does not currently endorse or condone an accepting understanding of gay marriage, and the culture of the community around me may not be as open to such an understanding, either.  And so, I am afraid.  Even as I write this, I am afraid that people in the church I serve will read it, and rather than be open to honest and respectful conversation (I have absolutely NO intention of forcing someone to believe in a way they cannot!), I will be dismissed outright, and the defensive lines will go up.

Is it possible that I am now starting to get an idea of how my friends and family have felt all these long years? Is that too much to consider, even?

I love the people of this church, in the way that I am called to love them (and I am grateful for such an amazing gift in such a short time span since my arrival here). I love that, together with them, we are able and privileged to seek out the love of God in Christ. Every day is an amazing gift because of these relationships, and I would grieve the loss of such more so than the issue of loss of income. Life is about relationship, and I am blessed to have as many as I do, especially in this congregation.

And I love my friends and family, with whom I have shared so much, whom I have been supported by, and whom I have been able to celebrate with, and mourn with, watching as they have been denigrated and denied the rights that I enjoy, for a love that is very evidently no less than mine is for my spouse.

And so, I find I am divided, and I do not know where to turn.  I find that I must seek out a way to walk a narrow – and increasingly shrinking – middle ground. I am thankful that this middle ground continues to shrink, but I find it difficult now to realize that, personally, I can celebrate, but vocationally, my hands are still tied, and celebration is the last thing I can do. The way forward is not clear; this will need to change.  I fear for what that may mean for the people in this church, in this community, whom I love, but who will not be comfortable with such changes.  I feel the tides of change, and I wish to be a part of seeing equal treatment of all, but neither do I wish to put up a barrier to those who do not feel the same as I do, whose humanity is just as valid, and whose opinion is, at least, to be just as respected.  We are called, I believe, to love everyone, as we have been loved. I know that there are people in my congregation who will be thrilled and overjoyed at these decisions, just as I know that there are people in my congregation who will not be happy, wondering what sort of world we live in.  I love them all, and am torn to be in the middle of this.  Even with all my privilege, I am torn.

I do not yet know which way to turn, save to say to my friends and family: Congratulations. I have known all along what the SCOTUS now affirms, and it gives me joy to see your joy.  I will continue to hope and, as able, work for change in my denomination, following all the proper and respectful ways to do so.  I believe that some modicum of harmony is possible, even if such a belief is naive.  May the Holy Spirit continue to guide us all…

Chasing the Divine

“The report of my death has been grossly exaggerated.” ~Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain)

My fingers may not have been very active here of late, but rest assured, my mind has.

In the many months past, I have walked through a good deal of transition. I should say, I’m still walking through it.  Having accepted a new call to a different church, told my previous congregation, planned a move, moved, started to get settled while hitting the ground at full speed…throughout all of that, I have not written much here.  But my mind, my spirit has continued on unabated.

Currently, to feed the part of me that is defined by wanderlust, I have been reading, off and on, Ruth Everhart’s book, Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land (Eerdmans Publishing, 2012).  She chronicles her experience as a pilgrim in the Holy Land, part of a documentary group, rekindling her connection with the Divine Presence, with all the questions that come with that, as well as some that may have been unanswered from seminary.

I’ve been savoring her story.

I long to be a pilgrim, myself.  To not simply travel, but to travel with purpose, and more so, to open myself up to an area, a culture, a history…not simply to observe it as a tourist (not that there’s much wrong with that), but to internalize, to connect, to be changed by it in a way that is only possible during pilgrimage, journey, seeking.  Everhart, early on, reflects on an understanding of pilgrims marked by the words, “May we go home by another way” (p.20).  A sense that, by engaging in a pilgrimage, the spiritual journeyman/woman will not be the same as he/she was at the outset.  There is a part of me that yearns for this.

The thought I’m currently wrestling with is: “Do I have to go on pilgrimage, though, to have any sort of this experience?  Is it at ALL possible to have this in worship on Sunday mornings?”

Because it seems to me that we as Christians, as disciples (those who follow) & apostles (those sent out), who gather regularly for worship to a God that has rarely left any people where they were found…it seems to me that we should be experiencing this by engaging in worship & church.  Else, why do we go to church?  Simply to be propped up?  To be encouraged?  To be solidified into a mold or an ideal?  No offense, but empty pats on the back are not why I go to church, or why I am following Christ as a leader in church.

It may not offer the same depth of experience as traveling as a pilgrim to a holy land (and I should know, I joyfully & reverently have walked the paths of Iona, Scotland), but Sunday worship ought to draw us in as pilgrims, and send us out as a changed people, holding our encounter with the Divine close to our hearts.  [Members of Gregory Memorial, be warned: I will attempt to not let you stay where you have been found!  I want us to be a pilgrim people!!]

While I will continue to slowly savor Everhart’s book, I will do so with relish, living vicariously though her and her questions.  In the meantime, I, for one, will seek to be changed by Sunday worship, changed into one who follows ever more closely to the One who calls and grants life.

And Rev. Everhart, forgive me if I misrepresented your journey; I am, however, grateful that you have provided a way for others to accompany you!

(You can read more on Ruth’s journey & reflections here and here, and listen to her interview on God Complex Radio here)

Voice Only: A Reflection on the Missing Generation

NB: The following are my own reflections and insights, based primarily on conversations and what I continue to observe as a (still somewhat) young adult in the Church today…

The question seems to have existed for as long as I’ve been able to remember, and still, after all this time, seems to be one that congregations and denominations ask with urgency and intentionality, if not near-panic: “How do we get young adults and youth to come to/remain in the church?”

Colleagues have told me that they are asked this question by congregations seeking to grow again, or reach out more, or become connected to this demographic.  People have speculated – relaxed worship styles, contemporary songs, more social media, call a young pastor, put a sign out front with hipster Jesus on it…the ideas are roughly the same now as they have been since mainline denominations realized that the young adult population was largely missing, and that that is bad thing.  Since then, books have even been written on the subject (though the best, in my humble opinion, continues to be “Tribal Church” by Carol Howard Merritt).

And yet, regardless of all these conversations and exercises in re-imaging ourselves, congregations and denominations continue to show a startling lack of young adult engagement and presence.  What’s more, the theory that all young adults return to the Holy Mother once they start having families of their own no longer holds true; Protestant and Catholic young adults are not going through their own version of the Amish rumspringa.

SO…

If none of these possible approaches to attracting and retaining young adults have produced the hoped for results, what will?  If contemporary or relaxed worship & music is not what congregations simply need to embrace to magically draw in the young adult masses, what is it that do we need to embrace?

Thankfully, I believe the answer is fairly straightforward, but paradoxically difficult: We need to give young adults more than just a visible role in the congregation and in the denomination.

Case in point: The General Assembly of my own denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), met this past summer in Pittsburgh for it’s bi-annual meeting.  At this meeting, there were roughly 170 Young Adult Advisory Delegates (YAADs) present, representing their regional Presbyteries and present to be actively engaged in the denominational discussions and decision-making.  And during the smaller committee meetings that took place during the first few days, the YAADs were fully engaged, being given the rights of both voice and vote.  They were heard.  They were respected.  Their vote counted every bit as much as that of someone who had been in the denomination for decades.  But that’s as far as it went.

When the time came for the entire body to come together in plenary to vote on the recommendations of the committees, the YAADs – young adult members of the Church in full standing, called by God, discerned by the Spirit – were asked to be seen, and heard only in the token sense.  When it came to the full decision-making, they were allowed to speak, to advise, to give voice to their understanding of how God was at work and leading the denomination, but it stopped there. The young adults of the Church were not allowed to vote.  That was reserved for adult commissioners only, the ones who obviously understood such matters better (full sarcasm intended).

We all but patted them on the head condescendingly, commented on how sweet and cute they were, and then turned our backs on them.

And right there, we see a perfect example of why the Church is not attracting young adults: We don’t actual care to allow them to have any full role in leading the Church.  We make a show of having them present, of listening to their voices, their experiences, their discernment.  But we won’t actually let them have a role in leading the Church into the future.

I’ve heard many individuals and congregations claim that they want to focus on youth and young adult, because they’re the future of the Church. Only they aren’t.  Baptized and confirmed individuals, regardless of age, are already full members of the Church; they are our present.

Until we allow them not just voice but vote, until we come to a point where we are willing to allow some of the decision-making power to depart from us and rest upon them, until we are willing to with our actions validate and recognize young adults, we will not see much of them in our congregations.  It really is that simple (though the concept of giving up power is often a foreign one to adults, even myself).

If we want to be inviting to young adults, if we want to them to be an active part of our communities of faith, then we must invite them to lead us, to be fully active in the role of discerning Christ’s future for the Church.  Until that day comes, young adults will, by and large, find better things to which to give their enormous talents, passions, and resources, and the Church will languish for it all.

My Sermon Response to the PCUSA 220th General Assembly

Following is my sermon for July 8, 2012, based on the Revised Common Lectionary, and in response to this General Assembly. These are my reflections, and my reflections alone, meant to be edifying as much as informative.

<2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10; Mark 6:1-13>

Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing and acceptable to you, O Holy Mystery, our Rock and Redeemer.  Amen.

I pray forgiveness if this sermon comes across as a little bit raw; I endeavored to keep it from becoming so, but I do not know if I succeeded.

As I mentioned last week in worship, I wear this stole today to show my mindfulness of those who are serving the church throughout this past week by being at our denomination’s General Assembly.  Throughout this week they have labored long in committee meetings, plenaries, and worship to guide our denomination into the next years to come.  These commissioners and advocates have labored for long hours, even into the wee hours of Saturday morning, recessing somewhere in the neighborhood of 1:30am, after starting business at 8:30am the previous morning.  There has been much heated discussion and debate, with most of it respectful, but I must confess that I am saddened by many of the decisions that have been made.

“[Jesus] called the Twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.  He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff…So they went out, and proclaimed that all should repent.  They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.”

I’ve always been fascinated with this account of the disciples being sent out in mission.  As Jesus deals with the incredulous response he received from his own hometown, the disciples are sent out to continue the work that he began, and has now called them to.  They go out, presumably to the other towns in the region, and they do all the things which we still understand to make up the proclamation of the Good News: they healed the sick and afflicted, they made whole the broken aspects of life, they lifted up people who were down and in need; in word and deed, the disciples made known that the Kingdom of God was drawing near to those who were yearning for it, those who were desiring to see it in their lifetimes.

Now, often, when I read this account, I try to imagine what it would have been like to be one of those disciples, performing such deeds and spreading the gospel invitation.  I wonder what it would take today to accomplish such feats of faith and compassion.  But it’s a simple answer, really.  In fact, it’s so simple that I usually overlook it, trying to discover something flashier, something more grand.

Synergy, in today’s parlance, is often used to describe the exciting result of the interaction of two separate items, meaning that the sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts.  But to put it in terms of the faith and the church, I would argue that synergy could just as accurately be used to describe the reality of a person living a life that outwardly reflects an inward awareness, of making one the exterior and the interior of a person.  It is the simple reality of synergy in one’s life that makes such living out the Kingdom of God possible.

Case in point: In our reading from 2 Samuel, we see that David has synergy.  The people approach him, declaring that he is to be their next king in the wake of the spectacularly-gone-awry experiment of Saul.  They know that he, David, will be a better and more faithful king because, even when he wasn’t king he acted as if he was.  Oh, not in the sense that he proclaimed himself king wherever he went, regardless of who was actually on the throne.  In fact, quite the opposite!  Wherever David went, he approached the people and interacted with them as one would expect a king to do, with the best interests of the people’s safety and welfare at his own heart.  David treated the people as a king ought to treat his people, and David did so before he ever sat on the throne.  His outward actions reflected an inward awareness of how his relationship with others was affected by his calling from God.  In such a self-awareness and synergy, it did not ultimately matter what his title or status were; he treated the people in such a way because he knew it to be the right way, and his conscience, his authentic self would not let him act any other way.  His actions showed his heart, and they were in line with what he spoke.  He did not say one thing, while doing another thing, and holding a third view within.

It is this same reality of living into this authenticity, between action, proclamation, and self-understanding, this synergy, that allows the disciples to fully and truly proclaim the good news, inviting people into deeper relationship with God, and moving away from the actions and lifestyles that fostered division.  After all, if someone came up to you, preaching good news of an invitation to a richer, fuller life, and then did not live out such a lifestyle himself, would you listen?  Of course not!  You would look at him and think, ‘He doesn’t even believe in the things he’s telling me; why should I believe him, then?’

The disciples go out, two by two, not simply to proclaim the Kingdom of God and the healing that goes with it, but to live out the Kingdom of God and the healing that goes with it.  By taking nothing but what is absolutely needed, they are freed from material distractions and concerns.  By going out in community with another disciple, they are living out the communal nature of the Kingdom, and showing the fullness of edifying relationship that marks the Kingdom for what it is; a place where concern for your brother and sister is the driving force of relationship, as opposed to what others will think of you, or what you’ll get out of the relationship.

And the lesson that comes with this understanding of what it is to live out the gospel is still one that we need today.  I mentioned earlier that I’ve been very frustrated with the PC(USA) General Assembly this past week.  I have spent long hours tuned into to the live feed on the internet, watching and listening as commissioners and advisors deliberated and voted.  And, though I say this cautiously, I must say that what I heard and saw does not show me a denomination that, in this past week, has followed the example put forth by our readings this morning.

Early in the week we elected a vice-moderator for the assembly, in good order and duly so.  Later in the week, she felt forced to resign her post, as those who still disagreed that she should have been elected in the first place threatened to manipulate the system to make sure nothing of the assembly’s business was addressed.  Where, I ask, was the discipline of loving your brother and sister, and working with the will of the assembly that had broken no rules in the election process?

Then, later in the week, the issue of divestment was discussed.  Some of the stock holdings of our denomination are in companies that profit from the violence between Palestine and Israel in the Middle East, and thus promote the oppression of a nation.  There was a resolution to urge the divestment of stock from such companies, opting not to receive income from companies and situations that purport violence.  We as a church proclaim the peace of the Kingdom of God, the peace that Christ has offered us and this world, and that such peace between neighbors and countries is one of our goals that we work toward.  The vote to make our perspective known by divesting from such companies and their practices was defeated; our denomination will continue to receive earnings from these companies, and from practices that allow for violence and oppression.

Finally, the discussion came to the issue of same-gender marriage.  And without recreating the discussion among us, because I know that we as a congregation are not of one view, it will suffice to say that in some ways it comes down to an understanding of whether or not we welcome people who have personally experienced Christ in their lives to have all the benefits of the church.  We claim, as the church, that anyone who seeks Christ more fully is welcome at the Table, that anyone who has been called by the Spirit has a place in our communities, that anyone who loves as Christ first loved will be invited in.  And regardless of what your understanding on this issue may be, the reality is that when we claim this as who we are, and then vote in such a way that does not honor people for who they are, the only message that the outside world receives is that we say one thing with our lips and another with our actions.  This vote, also, was ultimately defeated.  No authenticity.  No synergy.

We claim to be a church that wants to create and make known the peaceful Kingdom of God in this world, and yet we implicitly, if not explicitly, support violent climates in the areas where Jesus walked.  We claim to be a church where everyone is welcome, and yet we tell people that unless they look, act, or think like us, then there is no room for them here.  We claim to be a church that is creating a place for future generations, and then we talk about young adults as if they weren’t in the room with us, and as if we know what they really want, instead of listening to their voices and heeding their advice.  The actions of our General Assembly give me little hope for the future of our church, when this is the outcome of the week’s work for all the world to see.

And yet.  And yet, I still have hope.  There is still hope to be found.  Jesus was rejected in his hometown, unable to do any great acts of power, and yet his ministry did not stop there.  The disciples went out, sent out two by two, and continued the ministry begun, preparing the way for Christ to come in person and invite people into the full love of God.  Throughout all of this and even beyond the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, Jesus continues to bring healing to the world!  This is still the work that is before us today; what good news!  I may be saddened by the actions of this General Assembly, but it does not mean that the work of the Spirit for the increase of God’s Kingdom has ceased, and I am still called to such.  Each of us as disciples is still called to this.  Personally, I will abide by my denomination’s decisions; I am Presbyterian, and I will keep to the church’s decisions.  But I will not stop engaging the conversation, or proclaiming the good news as I have seen and experienced it.  I will not stop seeking the healing of Christ for a hurting and broken world.  Such is the calling of every disciple; not to be caught up in uniformity, but in unity to proclaim the good news as each and every one of us is called to do – with our own lives, our own experiences, our own synergy.  When we, in word and deed, continue to make such proclamation, then God’s Kingdom will be increased, and those who yearn for peace and wholeness will find it.  May God’s Kingdom truly come…Amen.